Betrayal
by KHGiggle
Summary: Beast wasn't at Hollow Bastion to help Sora.  What's gonna happen the our poor abandoned Keyblade master?  Name fixed in chapter 10
1. Betrayal

I know it's been a little while since I updated Sora the Maelstrom, but I got bitten by a plot bunny. It's one of those 'what if Beast wasn't at Hollow Bastion' stories. I've read a few of them before, and I wanted to try my hand at it. My way will probably be kind of violent…That's what happens when you have a mind like mine.

I don't own any of the characters in this story.

**Start the story!**

Sora stared at the toy sword on the ground. Riku had just taken the Keyblade and left him there. And Donald and Goofy had gone with him. He'd been abandoned. By his friends. His eyes started tearing up a bit. What was he supposed to do now? He paused when he felt a weight on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw a familiar cricket sitting on his shoulder. "Jiminy? You stayed?"

"Of course! You didn't think I was just gonna leave you all alone did you?"

Sora smiled. "Thanks." Sora thought for a moment. "Why did Donald and Goofy leave? I thought we were friends."

Jiminy sighed. "I don't understand it either. They were ordered to follow the key, but Riku…" Jiminy shook his head. "I don't think he's what the king had in mind."

Sora sighed. "I don't get it. Why was Riku acting like that? He's never acted like that before…"

"It's odd, but we can't worry about that right now. We need to figure out what to do. We can't stay here. It's full of Heartless and we're defenseless. We can't leave though since we won't be able to access the gummi ship without Donald and Goofy."

"Yeah…" Sora stared at the castle in the distance while he tried to think of something they could do. Suddenly an image of Kairi flashed in his mind. "Kairi!"

"Hm?"

"She was with Riku before! I bet she's here!" Sora grabbed the toy sword. "I need to find her and get her out of here!"

"Hold on now! You just said she was with Riku! The way he is now, he might attack you!"

"He wouldn't do that…" He might have left Sora on his own, but Sora didn't see how Riku could attack him. They'd been best friends since they were 3! "Besides, maybe I can talk some sense into him."

"But the Heartless-"

"I'll use magic. If I run low on mana, I'll just run away." Sora nodded to himself. "It would take longer to get around, but it could work."

Jiminy sighed. "If that's what you wanna do, then I won't stop you."

Sora smiled at Jiminy. "Don't worry. I'm sure everything will be okay." And then Sora stepped onto the lift to the castle.

Sora put his plan into action. He was able to take out some of the Heartless with his magic. The only problem was that the Heartless here were stronger than he was used to, and they were unfamiliar. There was one with a huge shield that he had to attack from behind, one that was shaped like a ball that was prone to bounce around and try to eat him, and one that looked like a wizard or something. The wizards could absorb magic so Sora had to avoid that particular Heartless. Still he had managed to find his way into the lower levels of the castle. Only he'd gotten hopelessly lost.

"Sora, we're going in circles," said Jiminy.

Sora panted and wiped some sweat off his forehead. The constant fighting was starting to take its toll on him. "Are you sure?"

Jiminy nodded. "I've been watching. We're definitely going in circles."

Sora groaned. "Great, and I can't find anywhere else I can go."

"What if you tried gliding?"

"Everywhere is too high for that to work." Sora sighed and sat down, leaning against a wall. "I'm gonna take a break. Maybe I can think of something." Within a few minutes, Sora had drifted off. Jiminy wasn't surprised. Sora had been fighting Heartless for a while. He decided to keep a look out for any Heartless until Sora woke up.

Actually, no Heartless popped up around Sora. It was peaceful for a few hours. Jiminy took the time to look over his journal. It was surprisingly peaceful. Then out of nowhere, a bunch of dark energy suddenly started seeping up from the floor and wall under Sora. Jiminy's eyes widened. "Sora! Wake up!"

Sora jerked awake. "Wha?" Then he saw what was happening and tried to grab onto something to keep from getting sucked into the darkness. There wasn't anything for him to grab though so he got sucked in, fell for a few seconds, and landed on a hard floor. He shuddered. "That felt really weird." He quickly checked Jiminy. He was okay, just stunned. Then Sora noticed someone. "Kairi!" Sora quickly ran over to his unconscious friend and started checking her over. She seemed unharmed except for the fact that she was unresponsive. Sora let out a sigh of relief. "Kairi, how am I gonna wake you up?"

"What're you doing here? !" Sora looked up and saw a furious looking Riku. Donald and Goofy were with him but couldn't seem to bring themselves to look at Sora. Sora quickly stood up and faced Riku.

"Riku, will you listen to me?" Riku narrowed his eyes. "You said I abandoned you and Kairi and replaced you, but that's not true. I looked for both of you across so many worlds. I made a lot of new friends, but they didn't replace you. How could they? I've known you guys practically my whole life. How could I ever replace you? It's like that saying from kindergarten. 'Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other's gold.'"

Riku gave Sora a disgusted look. "You're quoting nursery rhymes now? That's pathetic."

"I'm just saying. That's what it's like. Why did you think I was replacing you anyway?"

"Maleficent told me about it. I didn't believe it at first, but then I saw you laughing with those people-"

"Wait. Wasn't that after I ran into you? I asked you to come with me. Why didn't you come?"

"Because it was obvious you didn't really want me to go with you."

"That's not true! I wanted you to come with us so much! When you just disappeared, I was scared that I would never see you again! The only reason that I didn't turn Traverse Town upside down looking for you was because I know that you sometimes like to be alone when you think about things and you're strong enough to protect yourself from the Heartless. I still looked all over the town for you. And I kept looking for Kairi too. I never stopped looking, even after I found out you sided with the Heartless. I don't even care that you left me all alone after you took the Keyblade." By this time Sora was crying. He'd poured out all the emotions he'd had building up during this whole mess. He put on a happy face but that was because he figured that if he was carefree, others would worry less. Not that Sora wasn't usually happy. This kind of mess can just get anyone down. "Riku, please, I just want us all to be together again."

For a moment, neither of them moved. Sora honestly couldn't tell if his speech had any effect on Riku. Then Riku dashed forward, raising the Keyblade. Sora's heart broke. He didn't even try to dodge.

Now, a Keyblade is a rather unique weapon. It permanently kills creatures like Heartless that are spawned due to a person's heart. It works pretty well on regular monsters since most of them are created due to bad emotions. It can have weird effects on humans though. If it's a fairly normal human, they die, no questions asked. If a person is rather different, it might not be so final. For example, a stubborn person will become a Nobody, although that can be taken care of permanently with a Keyblade. If a person has ties to the darkness or light that are strong enough, they might be able to bring themselves back to life or find some other way to preserve their existence for a while. So the Keyblade wouldn't be the best weapon to use to get rid of these people. It's one of the reasons Keyblade wielders aren't supposed to meddle with the world order. If they have to do something about someone, they can't be sure they'll stay dead. If they do get involved, it's best to let someone else finish them, or use a different weapon at the very least.

Sora had never been normal. As such, when Riku landed what would have definitely been a killing blow, something very odd happened.

When Riku slashed Sora, it went through most of the younger boy's body. Fortunately, the way Riku slashed meant that Sora's spine was only lightly nicked. Unfortunately, pretty much everything else got damaged. Sora collapsed in a puddle of his own blood. Up until then, everything had happened normally. This was where it got odd. Sora's body started glowing. Riku turned and raised an eyebrow. Then Kairi's body started smoking. Riku's eyes widened. "Kairi!" Then four bright lights flew out of Sora's body as it started to disappear in a whirlwind of crystal fragments. The hearts and glows flew into the Keyhole off to the side that Sora hadn't noticed, inadvertently completing it. Then Kairi's body disappeared into darkness as Riku watched in disbelief. "Kairi!"

"How could you?"

Riku whipped around. That had sounded like Kairi, but he didn't see her anywhere. "Kairi! Where are you? !" No one answered. Then he heard bawling. He turned and stared at the crying anthros. "What's with you two?"

"You killed Sora!" accused Donald.

"And after he said all that too," sobbed Goofy.

Riku snorted. "Like he even meant any of that."

"But he did." Riku whirled around to see the hooded man from Destiny Islands. "He meant every word. He poured out his heart, and you crushed it. That's why he didn't try dodging."

Riku raised an eyebrow. "You again? What're you talking about?"

"That is no longer important." The man tilted his head. "What a foolish boy. You don't even see what's right in front of you." Then he walked into the Keyhole and a wave of darkness came out of it.

"We need to get out of here!" shouted Donald. The three quickly ran out. If they had stayed a bit longer, they would have seen the capsules containing the princesses start glowing.

**That's it for now.**

And that's the prologue. For some reason, I seem to have horrible things happen to Sora in my stories. Poor Sora.

By the way, Jiminy will be fine. He will reappear at a later point, but it won't be for a while.

Any guesses for what's gonna happen?


	2. Aftermath

This chapter mainly deals with the aftermath of Sora's death and the completion of the Keyhole. There are going to be some very angry people. I don't own any of the Disney or Square Enix characters.

**Chapter Start!**

"We need to tell Leon about this!" shouted Donald. At the moment, the group was watching as Hollow Bastion was covered with darkness. Donald was inputting Traverse Town's coordinates into the warp gummi.

"That's one of Sora's replacements, isn't it?" asked Riku. He didn't seem to care that Hollow Bastion was exuding more darkness than ever before.

"They're not gonna be happy about this," sighed Goofy.

"We don't have a choice." Donald hit the start button.

A few seconds later, they were in front of Traverse Town and beamed down. Yuffie and Aerith were standing next to the mailbox. Yuffie noticed them first. "Hey, where's Sora? And who's the Sephiroth look-a-like?" Riku gave her a weird look.

"Who's Sephiroth?"

"Why isn't Sora with you?" asked Aerith. She was very worried. She became even more worried when Donald and Goofy didn't say anything. "What happened?"

"We messed up," confessed Goofy.

Yuffie paled. "Oh Shiva, what did you do?"

Goofy and Donald instantly got extremely guilty looks on their faces. Riku didn't seem to care. Aerith started tearing up. "Did Sora…Was he…?"

"He's gone," said Riku.

"What? ! You guys were supposed to be helping him!" shouted Yuffie. Then she gave Riku a suspicious look. "And aren't you a friend of his? You look like you couldn't care less!"

"So what?"

"What'd you say? !"

Aerith quickly pulled Yuffie away. "We need to tell Leon what happened. Whatever it was."

"No thanks." Riku turned and started walking away. "You're on your own."

"But you have the Keyblade-" Donald was interrupted by Yuffie.

"He has the Keyblade? But Sora's supposed to have it!"

Riku snorted. "He was just the delivery boy." Then he went through a dark portal.

Yuffie twitched. "We're doomed, aren't we?"

Shortly afterwards, they were in the house meeting with Leon and Cid. "You did what? !" Surprisingly enough, Leon was the one who shouted that. He wasn't the only one who felt that way. Yuffie seemed to be on the verge of apoplectic rage and Cid was cursing up a storm that would make a sailor brush. Aerith was simply crying. She'd been fond of Sora.

"The king told us to find the key and follow it," explained Donald. "We didn't think that the person who had it would kill anyone!"

Leon took a deep breath. "So you're saying, you left Sora on his own because Riku got the Keyblade somehow. Then Riku decided to attack Sora and you didn't try to help him in any way?" Silence. "Get out. Now." Donald and Goofy didn't seem surprised. They left, just as depressed as before.

"So what do we do now?" asked Cid. "We were dependin' on the kid to get rid of the Heartless. I don't think Riku's gonna be interested in helping us out."

"Of course not!" shouted Yuffie! "The guy's psycho! He killed his best friend for practically no reason!"

Leon sighed. "I know." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We'll just have to go back to what we were doing before until we can think of another way to take care of this."

"But…the darkness has gotten stronger," said Aerith. "The Heartless will be getting stronger too."

Yuffie groaned. "And we were already having trouble with the Heartless."

Cid snorted. "Maybe if we weren't the only ones fighting the things, we'd be able to make some sort of dent in the numbers."

"That might work…" muttered Leon. "We know about other worlds that have come into contact with Sora and Heartless. If we can go to these worlds and ask people to learn how to fight, teach them how to use weapons and kill Heartless…"

"Aren't we supposed to preserve the world order?" asked Yuffie.

"If the darkness is getting stronger, then the world borders will be eroding. The damage done to the world order won't be able to get much worse."

"And more worlds are gonna go kaput," said Cid. "The survivors should be pretty strong so we can get them to help out too."

"How are we going to teach so many people though?" asked Aerith.

"The coliseum has a trainer and tournaments," said Leon. He knew this from when he'd entered a tournament before. "Maybe we can get Phil to help us out."

Meanwhile, Donald and Goofy were sitting on the steps in the First District. "Now what do we do?" asked Donald. "We got our friend killed, we lost Riku, Leon hates us, and we still haven't found His Majesty."

"I miss Sora…" Donald sighed. It seemed like Goofy was going to be depressed for a while.

"Maybe we should try to find Master Yen Sid. I don't think we're going to be able to get help anywhere else." Goofy just nodded.

Elsewhere, a girl was wandering around the forest around Twilight Town. She was wearing a sleeveless white dress that went to just above her knees, white sandals, and red hair that was slightly past her shoulders with part of it draped over her right shoulder. She looked rather annoyed and her eyebrow was twitching a bit. The trees looked all the same to her. Actually, they all looked the same to most people. She let out an annoyed sigh.

"Lost?"

The girl quickly spun around to see a tall man in a black hooded cloak that hid his face. "Who're you?"

"Nobody. And you are?"

The girl hesitated for a moment. "Nobody."

The man chuckled. "Then I think we can help each other." She blinked in confusion.

"Huh?"

*break*

Leon managed to put his plan into action. As predicted, the Heartless had gotten stronger. It was difficult to fight them if you were inexperienced. Because of this, most newbies ended up at the Coliseum for training. As expected, more worlds were lost, and more refugees showed up. Oddly enough, a good deal of them suffered from very bad amnesia.

One of the people who decided to go to the Coliseum was Aladdin. This was because he wanted to find Jasmine. She was presumably still in Hollow Bastion and you'd have to be very good at fighting to survive there the way it is now. Even people like Leon or Cloud or Hercules didn't go there.

While Aladdin was learning some new moves, he met someone very surprising. It was an odd creature that seemed to be a mix of several different creatures. It was very scary looking, and no one wanted to get near it. It wasn't attacking anyone though. Eventually, Aladdin's curiosity won out and he walked over to the strange creature. "Hi there!" It gave him a look and growled. "Are you new here?"

"No."

That made Aladdin blink. "Really? That's weird. I've been here a few weeks and I don't remember seeing you before…" It (Okay, probably a he) started walking away. Aladdin started following. "No offense, but you stick out. I'd have remembered seeing you before." That made him growl again. "What're you here for?"

"I am looking for someone."

"Me too. Her name is Jasmine. She got kidnapped by an evil fairy, who I don't think looks anything like a fairy, named Maleficent."

That made the creature pause. "Maleficent?"

"Yeah, have you heard of her?" Aladdin chose to assume the responding growl was a yes. "She's supposed to be behind the Heartless invasion, but I don't get why she kidnapped Jasmine. Jafar said it had something to do with seven maidens, but he didn't go into detail. I hear she's supposed to be in Hollow Bastion."

The creature gave him an odd look. "Hollow Bastion?"

"Yeah, a world that got overrun by Heartless but wasn't destroyed. Some people saw some girls in enchanted sleep or something in a castle there. One of them is supposed to be Jasmine." Aladdin sighed. "The Cids refused to take me there though. Said I wouldn't stand a chance. So I'm training here until I can beat Cloud or Leon or Hercules. Maybe then they'll decide I can go there, and if they won't take me, I'll steal a ship and figure out how to get there on my own." Aladdin figured he'd never be able to afford a gummi ship.

"Were there other women in this castle?"

Aladdin blinked at this question. "Well, there were two rows of three, so that's five other girls. One's supposed to be younger than the others. Why? Are you looking for someone too?"

The creature just growled, and turned, heading towards the Coliseum. Aladdin decided to go after him. "Hey! Wait up! If you want to go to Hollow Bastion too, then maybe we can help each other!"

*break*

Riku frowned as he calmly left another world. He still hadn't found anything about Kairi. He was sure that she was still around somewhere. Her body had simply disappeared into darkness. Her soul and heart should be okay. After all, he went into the darkness all the time, and he was just fine. It looked like this time around, it was going to take a lot longer to find her though. It wasn't a problem though. After all, he had all the time in the world.

**End Chapter!**

And that's the general aftermath of the prologue. Sora's death is going to make it darker than the original Kingdom Hearts story in several ways.

Goofy and Donald will redeem themselves eventually, but they won't be showing up again for a while.


	3. Waking Up

This chapter takes place roughly a year after Sora is killed by Riku. That's all I can say without giving things away. I still don't own any of the things being used in this story.

**Chapter Start!**

There are many mysterious places in the multiverse. Some are mysterious because people have long since forgotten why they were built. Others simply seem mysterious because of their appearance. Others are mysterious because of the fact that people don't know whether they exist or not or don't know where they might be. Some places are mysterious because strange things happen there. This place in particular falls mainly in the third category. The second and fourth ones could apply too if you decided to stretch their meanings.

It is a white room with some glowing heart symbols on the wall. Some glowing chain designs came from the bottoms of these designs and went to a chair/throne in the center of the room. Sitting in this throne was a sleeping young man. The boy was a dark blond with his spiky hair sort of swept to the right side. It was an odd hairstyle. He was wearing a jacket that was white on the right side and black on the left side, a gray vest with light brown designs under that, and a black turtleneck T-shirt after that. He had some armor peeking out from under his second vest with matching armor strapped onto his left shoulder. He had dark gray pants that changed to light gray part way down and had a white stripe and then a black bottom. His shoes had armor on the top, but were mainly gray and black in color. They didn't look like they came off. As stated before, he was sleeping. He'd been asleep for a while, but he was starting to wake up.

Slowly, blue eyes started to open. He blinked groggily and stared straight ahead for a few minutes. Then he noticed some red and black blobs on the white floor. His eyes went to the red, and he saw another young man. He was wearing a red jumpsuit sort of thing with a blue belt, a gray jacket, a crown necklace, and big yellow shoes. His brown hair was even spikier than the blond boy's. The blond didn't notice any of this though. What he noticed was the slash in the jumpsuit going from the boy's left shoulder to his right hip and the dried blood on the clothes. That woke him up. He jumped off the throne and ran to the injured boy.

"Hey! Are you okay? !" The boy didn't respond. The blond quickly put his fingers to the other's neck and let out a sigh of relief when he found a pulse. "Come on…Wake up! You can do it!"

"Will you stop with the shouting? !" The blond jumped and quickly turned to see who had shouted. Then he did a double-take between the shouter and the injured boy. They looked like they could be twins, except for maybe the coloration. This one wasn't tanned like the other one. He was actually a bit pale. His hair was also black instead of brown, but it was in the same exact shape as the injured boy's. His eyes were a glowing yellow, which was odd and kind of creepy. The blond found himself hoping that the injured boy didn't have the same eyes. He also seemed somewhat more muscular than the injured boy. In addition, the dark twin (It just jumped into his mind, and it did fit.) had some odd clothes. He was wearing an odd black jumpsuit that turned red down the arms with some red outlining his chest and pecs, sort of off-maroon boots with red along the top, a black ragged cloth hanging from a belt around his waist with another couple of belts that seemed to be holding it closed, and some metal around the bottom of his face for some reason. He seemed rather groggy and grumpy so the blond boy assumed that he'd been woken by his shouting.

"This guy's hurt! I'm trying to wake him up!"

The dark guy narrowed his eyes, grabbed the injured boy by the ripped jumpsuit, and lifted him up, causing the belt to fall off (It had been sliced completely through.) while the blond protested. "Did you even bother to take a look at this? It's completely healed. No way could anyone miss that honking huge scar it left! Anyway, you don't wake up injured people. That makes the bleeding worse."

The blond stared. "…Why do you know that?

A groan suddenly came from the injured boy. Seems getting lifted and manhandled had woken him up somewhat. He blinked a pair of blue eyes confusedly while staring at the hand currently holding him in the air. "Wha-? Who?" The dark guy let go of him, but the blond caught him before he hit the ground. The scarred boy just groaned and held his head. "What happened?"

"No idea," quipped the dark guy.

"Are you okay?" asked the blond. "You're covered in blood. Did something happen?"

Hearing that he was covered in blood woke him up. He looked down at his jumpsuit with wide eyes. He peeled some of the cloth away and winced when he saw the scar. It went from his left shoulder to his right hip like the cut in his clothing and was a couple of inches wide. He felt it for a moment. "I…I don't remember how I got this." He looked around in confusion. "Where am I anyway? How did I get here?"

"Uh…" That was a good question. The blond couldn't remember how he got here either…Or why he was here…or his name…that couldn't be good. "I got nothing." He quickly turned to the dark guy. "You got any idea?"

"Hm…" He thought for a moment. The other two suspected that he had amnesia too. Then he hit his fist into his open hand as if he just figured something out. "I got it! We've been kidnapped so that scientists can experiment on us and to keep us from resisting, they erased all our memories!" The other two just stared at him. Then they heard a giggle and all three turned towards the source.

The source turned out to be a girl peeking out from behind the throne. "Sorry. That just sounded so funny." She was a bit shorter than the boys…who were all the same height for some reason. She had short black hair with a fringe on the right side of her forehead and blue eyes. She was wearing a white tank top with a black tank top under it, a purple skirt held up with a blue belt with a pair of lavender shorts under it, a yellow wristband, a blue armband, white and purple slip on sneakers with zippers, a black choker, and a necklace with a silver charm on it.

"So, do you know why we're here?" asked the dark guy.

She shook her head. "I just woke up behind that chair and heard you guys." She turned to look at the scarred boy. "Are you okay?" He shrugged. He felt okay, but he honestly didn't know.

"Do any of you guys know who we are?" asked the blond. "Because I can't remember my name."

"I've never seen any of you before in my life," said the dark guy.

"But can you remember any of your life?" asked the girl. "I just woke up and couldn't remember anything before that."

"…Okay, you got a point there."

"My name's Sora," said the scarred boy. The dark guy gave him a suspicious look.

"Why do you know your name?"

Sora flipped his crown necklace over to show the opposite side, which had a kanji carved into it. "It's written on the back." Fortunately, everyone there knew how to read kanji for some reason. That sort of confused them, but they decided to just be thankful they had some sort of knowledge.

"I wonder if the rest of us have our names on our clothes," mused the blond.

"Let's see." Then the dark guy started stripping. The girl let out a squeak and promptly turned around. The blond blanched. Sora just blinked before asking a question.

"Do you work out a lot or something?"

The dark guy just shrugged while he looked his clothes over before scowling. "These don't have any name on them anywhere!"

"Then put them back on!" said the blond. Thankfully, the dark guy decided to listen. When he was dressed again, the girl was given the okay to turn around.

"Warn me before you do that again, okay?" said the girl. She was blushing furiously from seeing that.

"Fine, aren't you two gonna check?" Well, it was the only thing that might tell them who they are…In the end, the other two did check their clothes, but only when the others turned around and didn't look at them. Sora was the only one with a name written on anything.

"So, what do we do now?" asked the blond.

"I guess we can try coming up with names," suggested the girl.

"No way! I'm getting out of here before the scientists come to experiment on me!" With that, the dark guy opened the only door in the room and left. The other three looked at each other before Sora shrugged.

"He has a point. We can't really stay here."

So the three hurried after the dark guy. It only took a few moments to catch up to him. The rest of whatever they were in was white with some columns and pedestals with sculpted flowers on them. It seemed to be a bit of a maze in there. The girl looked at Sora in concern. "Are you okay?"

"Hm?"

"That scar. It doesn't hurt does it?"

Sora frowned and rubbed said scar. "It doesn't hurt…but it doesn't feel normal." It was a weird feeling. He tried to think of a good way to describe it. "It feels…tight…kind of stretched I think. It's sort of like when you put on clothes that are too small."

"Like you two?" quipped the dark guy. It was true. Sora and the girl's clothes were too small for them. Both looked down and blushed.

"We can try to find you guys some new clothes after we get out of here," said the blond. He sighed. "That could take a while though…This place must be huge whatever it is."

"At least we haven't run into any guards," said the dark guy. He got some disbelieving looks.

"Uh, I don't think there are any doctors here. This doesn't look like a lab," said the girl.

"How would you know? You have amnesia like the rest of us!" They sighed. No way were they going to be able to convince him that they weren't involved in an experiment of some kind.

After a very long time, they found themselves in front of some big double doors that were different from the rest of wherever they were. Hoping that it led somewhere, they pushed them open. It led outside. They happily ran out. They were getting sick of white. Outside was what seemed to be a large plain of grass with some paths cutting through it. They turned to see where they had been. It was a topsy-turvy looking castle on a cliff that came out of nowhere. It was very out of place.

"That's where we were?" asked the blond. "It looks like somewhere a villain would stay."

The darky guy nodded in agreement. "Now do you believe me?" He got an exasperated look from the blond.

"I said a villain, not a mad scientist."

"Uh, who do you think lives here?" asked the girl. "I mean, it has to belong to someone, right?"

She had a good point there. They didn't think they wanted to meet whoever that was, so they made a break for it across the grass.

After running for a very long time, they finally decided they were getting tired and came to a stop, flopping back onto grass, bending over the knees, and anything that would allow them to not have to use any muscles. After lying there for a few minutes, the girl suddenly sat up with a frown. "We need names! I'm tired of thinking of you guys as 'you guys!'"

"I have a name," said Sora. The girl rolled her eyes slightly.

"Yeah, but you can't be the only one with a name."

Blonde sighed. "We couldn't find anything written on our clothes though."

"We'll just make up some names!" said the dark guy. "I'll be Muscles." He pointed at the blond. "You can be Spike." He ignored the look of disbelief and moved on to the girl. "You can be Sally!"

"Sally?"

"I am not gonna be Spike!" shouted the blond.

"How 'bout Goldilocks then?"

"That's a girl's name!"

"I'd like this." Everyone looked at the girl, who was holding a flower. They were obviously confused, so she quickly explained. "For my name. I like the way it looks."

"What sort of flower is it?" asked Sora.

"I'm not sure…" It was pink with plenty of petals. Maybe it was some kind of daisy? "Hana then…I'll be Hana." It was a good name…That just left two of the boys.

"I will not go by Spike! Or Goldilocks!"

"How 'bout Kaze?" Everyone looked at Sora. "What? It looks like the wind did that to his hair!"

"Fine…It's better than what he was coming up with."

"I still think Muscles suits me." Well, he _was_ the only one who had noticeable muscles.

"That's not a very good name though," said Hana. "How 'bout Raven? You remind me of one."

"Hey, that's actually a pretty cool name." That taken care of, they continued on their way. They might have been wandering around forever, except they ran into something odd. Or rather, something ran into them, specifically Sora. One second, they were walking. The next, something had bowled over Sora. It turned out to be an odd yellow dog that was happily licking Sora.

"Sora made a friend!" shouted Hana. Then she started petting the dog. "Did you get lost boy?"

"Why else would he be here?" asked Raven. "There's nothing around here."

"Good point." A bit of coaxing, and Hana got the dog off Sora. "His collar says his name is Pluto." The dog barked happily. He then started running down the path. He stopped, turned back, and barked at them.

"I guess he wants us to follow him," said Sora.

"Why would we do that?" asked Raven.

"Well, we don't exactly have a destination in mind," pointed out Kaze. That said, they started running after the dog.

**End Chapter**

Now you know what happened to Sora! He ended up in Castle Oblivion. There's not much in this chapter so there's not much for me to say…


	4. Twilight Town

And here is chapter 4. Should start to get interesting. I still don't own anything except for part of the plot.

**Chapter Start!**

The quartet had been following Pluto for quite a long while. They weren't sure how long exactly, just that they'd stopped to rest several times. They talked occasionally, but there wasn't much for them to talk about since they were missing all their memories from before a few days ago. Eventually, they got somewhere very noticeable. It was a town with apartments, a forest, and a large wall surrounding it.

"Wow, what a pretty sky," said Hana. "It looks really familiar…"

Raven shrugged. "It's just sunrise or sunset. You've probably seen it before and just forgot it like everything else."

"How come there wasn't any sunrise or sunset before now?" asked Kaze. It was true. Before, it just went from day to night and vice versa in a split second. There was no transition. It was a bit unsettling.

"Guys, we have a problem," said Sora.

"Yeah, that dog's still not leaving us alone," said Raven. It was still following them quite happily.

"No, it's not that," said Sora. "People are giving me really weird looks." That made them pause. Yeah, they were dressed oddly, but Sora really stood out with his torn and bloody jumpsuit. It seemed to actually be scaring the people away.

"We better get you some new clothes," said Hana. "Does anyone have any money?"

They didn't. This was a problem. After all, they were gonna have to get food eventually. "Bet we could get some off of people," said Raven.

"You mean like payment, right?" asked Kaze

"…No."

"Raven!" Honestly, why was that the first solution he thought of?

Fortunately, it turned out people in this town posted jobs on bulletin boards so that anyone who was interested could do them. Only problem was that no one really wanted to hire Sora due to the blood. This left most of it to Hana, Kaze, and Raven, although people were kind of nervous about Raven too because his appearance screamed badass troublemaker. Thankfully, they managed to scrounge up enough munny (weird currency) to get Sora some new simple clothes, a long-sleeved red shirt with a black T-shirt to wear over it, and Bermuda shorts. He kept his yellow shoes since they were about the same size. After a couple of minutes of finding somewhere deserted for him to change, the other three found themselves waiting outside an alley.

"How long do you think it'll take to get new clothes for me?" asked Hana. "These are really tight and uncomfortable…and I think they're starting to chaff me."

"Oh come on, we just got Sora new clothes!" complained Raven. "Besides, I'm hungry. I wanna get some food!"

"Yeah, I think we should focus on food right now," agreed Kaze. "I mean, we need to eat. We can wait to get clothes." He paused. "Although if we are saving up for clothes, I think we should get Raven new clothes too. His are creepy."

"Hey! I like my clothes!"

"Hardly anyone hired you because they thought you were some sort of psycho!"

"Hey!" The three blinked and looked up. There was another quartet in front of them. The one who had talked was a boy a bit older than them wearing a sleeveless white trench coat, a black beanie, a blue vest with white lining that showed off his stomach, gray drawstring pants, and black boots. "Yeah, you!"

"Uh, can we help you?" asked Hana. They were making her nervous, but she figured she should be polite.

"Are you the troublemaker's we've been hearing about?" asked the boy.

That caused some confused blinking. Kaze turned to Raven. "You didn't do anything did you?"

"Hey! I behaved!"

"Well, so did I," said Kaze. "Sora didn't really get the chance to do much of anything, and Hana's too nice to misbehave for no reason. You sure you don't have us mixed up with someone else?"

"One of them's supposed to have yellow eyes, ya know!" said the bulky looking guy. He had scruffy black hair, a tan, a chain necklace, an orange wife beater with some black designs on it, blue and white wristbands, black pants with two parallel orange stripes going down the side with an 8 near the top, and black and yellow shoes. Everyone looked at Raven.

"Sure, pick on the creepy looking guy…Besides, that kid has yellow eyes!" Raven scrunched his eyes at the kid. It was a weird looking kid. "…and no other facial features."

Said kid looked down sadly. "I know…"

"Yeah, Vivi looks kind of weird," said the guy with the beanie. "But that's not the point! There was also supposed to be a guy covered in blood."

"No one here with bloody clothes," said Hana. Yeah, she's nice, but she's caught on that it would be best to avoid getting in trouble with these people.

At that moment, Sora chose to come out with his bloody clothes slung over an arm. "I'm done. Sorry I took so long. I had to get some of the blood off." Then Sora noticed the extra group. "Uh, hi there?"

The girl in the other group, who had silver hair covering her left eye, a sleeveless zip-up shirt, khaki clam diggers, and lavender slip on shoes, pointed at his torn up jumpsuit. "Blood."

"Found ya!" Seifer marched up to the brunette. "And why are you covered in blood?"

"I got hurt!"

"Do you have any proof?"

"Oh!" Raven ran over and lifted up Sora's shirt. "He's got this scar!" Sora yelped and tried to cover himself up. For some reason, he just felt really uncomfortable letting just anyone see it. Raven grabbed Sora's ripped up clothes. "It fits the tear in his clothes!"

"Yeah, Sora got hurt real bad, and we just now got the money to replace his clothes!" said Hana.

"So stop picking on Sora, you big bullies," demanded Kaze.

"Can you let go of my shirt now?" asked Sora. It was an uncomfortable position for him.

"We're not bullies," said the guy with the beanie. "We're the Twilight Town Disciplinary Committee. Don't you know anything?"

"I thought those were for schools," said Hana.

"That's not the point!"

"Seifer, I think they're telling the truth," said Vivi. He seemed more timid than the others in the Committee.

"You're actually falling for this Vivi?" asked Seifer.

The girl suddenly walked up to Sora and grabbed his old jumpsuit. "Cut." She held up the jumpsuit. It had been cleanly cut through at some point.

"Yep, it's been cut, ya know."

The girl rolled her eyes. "Clean cut. Not torn."

"Oh, good point," said the guy with the beanie. "Still, no one recognizes you, and you must've come here for a reason!" And then Pluto jumped on him. "What the-" He looked at the growling dog. "Get this mutt off me!"

"Sorry about that." Hana grabbed Pluto's collar and pulled him off with some help from Kaze. "It's strange. He's a really friendly dog…" Pluto was still growling at the group.

The guy who had been knocked down got up with a sneer. "Haven't you ever heard of a leash law?"

Raven smirked. "We don't have a leash."

"And he's not our dog," said Sora. "We just sort of found him, and he stuck around."

"Actually, we followed him here," said Kaze. "We were kind of lost at the time…"

"There's nothing out there for miles," said the guy with the beanie. "No way could you get lost!"

Raven had apparently had enough. He stomped up to the blonde man and sucker punched him in the face. "Back off!"

"Why you-!" The blond grabbed the Raven and slammed him into a wall. Kaze and Sora ran to try and help, but were intercepted by the girl and the other man, respectively. Raven kicked out at the blond and hit him in the crotch, successfully getting out of his grip. Sora dodged a punch from the other guy. Kaze had to jump over an attempted sweep from the girl.

Hana decided to sneak over to the odd looking kid. She didn't know if she had any fighting skill, but she felt she'd just get in the way so she decided to talk to the other person who wasn't fighting. "So, Vivi, right?"

"Uh huh."

"Does this happen often?"

Vivi sighed. "It usually doesn't go this far." Both winced as Raven grabbed a pipe and hit the blond in the side with it. "It happens sometimes…"

"So, Disciplinary Committee?"

Vivi shrugged. "There's not a lot to do here…"

"Oh…" Hana paused as Sora dodged a trashcan, which hit Kaze instead. It was starting to become an all-out brawl. "Any idea how to stop this?"

"No…usually they stop pretty quickly." Both winced as the girl did a flying kick into Raven. "Who are you guys anyway? Are you moving here?"

"I'm Hana, this here is Pluto, the brunette is Sora, the blond is Kaze, and Raven is the one with the yellow eyes." Hana paused. "I don't know about moving here." She didn't even know where she lived… "So, who are you guys?"

"I'm Vivi." He pointed at the guy with the beanie. "He's Seifer." He pointed at the girl. "She's Fuujin." He pointed at the other guy. "And he's Raijin."

"Those two talk kind of weird."

"Yeah, but you get used to it." They heard a loud crack and turned around. Seifer was currently unconscious, and Sora was standing over him with a broken board.

"Okay, we win. Now get lost!" said Raven. The rest of the Disciplinary Committee decided to listen and quickly grabbed Seifer and left. Raven grinned. "That was pretty exhilarating."

Sora patted himself over. "Huh, I don't feel sore or tired."

"Yeah, it's weird," said Kaze. This was kind of odd, especially because they'd gotten hit a few times.

"I think we're gonna get in trouble if we stay here," said Hana. "We should leave."

"But there's nothing around here," said Sora. It was true. They literally had nowhere else to go. They were stuck.

Then Pluto suddenly sat up straight and started sniffing. He ran off down the alley. They decided to follow him. After all, he'd gotten them to Twilight Town. Maybe he'd show them where to go this time. He didn't. Instead, he jumped on a small boy and started licking him.

"Pluto!" Sora quickly pulled Pluto off the boy. "Sorry, he's…friendly."

The boy just blinked up at the older boy. He was unusually pale with short black hair and big blue eyes. Hana knelt down to talk to him. "You okay? You didn't hit your head when Pluto knocked you down, did you?" The boy shook his head.

"Okay, now what do we do?" asked Raven. They were silent. Then the little boy yawned. This caused everyone else to yawn.

"Can we just get some rest?" asked Kaze. "We've been busy for…I don't know how long!"

Everyone decided this was a good idea and went back to the alley they were at before. For some reason it had a couch, a dartboard, and some blankets. For some reason, the little boy followed them. When they asked him where he lived, he just shrugged. They let him have the couch and just improvised with everything else.

When they woke up the next morning, they were sore. "Okay, let's avoid sleeping on the ground from now on," muttered Raven. Everyone muttered an agreement. Then their stomachs growled. They promptly used the rest of their munny to buy breakfast for themselves and the boy.

"Do you have a name?" asked Hana. The boy shook his head. "You sure?" He nodded. "Do you have amnesia, too?" He shook his head. "Where do you live?" He shrugged. Hana sighed. "Can you talk?" He shrugged.

"He's kind of a weird kid," commented Kaze. "And shouldn't someone have recognized him by now and asked about him?" Kaze had a good point.

"Maybe he's not from here either?" suggested Sora. "I mean, it would explain why no one seems to recognize him."

Then the boy's head suddenly jerked up and looked towards a corner of a building. He promptly hid behind Hana's legs. "Uh, you okay?" He kept staring at the corner. "Is something over there?" She made to go over there, but he grabbed at her and desperately shook his head.

"Eh, I'll go check." Raven walked over to the corner and peered around it. He came back over frowning. "There were some footsteps when I walked over there. I think someone was watching us."

"The guys from yesterday?" asked Sora.

"I dunno. I didn't see who it was." Raven crossed his arms. "We better keep an eye out, just in case."

The boy suddenly looked up. Then he started running away. He stopped a few feet away and waved at the quartet. Then Pluto ran after him. Seeing that the only other thing they had to do was odd jobs, the quartet followed them for several minutes until they got to the tram station.

"We don't have the munny to ride one of those," explained Hana. He ran into the station anyway.

"I think we should follow him," said Raven.

"Why?"

Sora frowned and looked over towards the slope they'd walked up. "Is it just me or is there someone over there?" Kaze looked at him in surprise.

"You feel it too?" There was an awkward silence. They decided to go into the station.

The boy was standing next to an empty track that Pluto was sniffing at curiously. He perked up when he saw the quartet. He ran over, grabbed, Hana, dragged her over to the empty track, and put her hand on something. Hana's eyes widened. "Guys! There's something here!"

"Seriously?" The boys came over and ran their hands over the seemingly empty space. There did seem to be something there. It had windows and a door. Maybe it was a tram? The boy then walked forward and seemingly disappeared.

Sora's eyes widened. "Whoa! He disappeared!"

"Do you think we can get on it too?" asked Kaze.

"I don't know," said Hana. "Do you think it's safe?"

Sora stuck his arm through the spot. It disappeared up to his elbow. "It feels okay." He stepped through. A second later, he stuck his head back through the door. "Hey, come in here! It looks really cool!" Pluto suddenly started growling. Then Sora blinked and looked up. "Who're you guys?" The other three promptly turned around.

There were two people in black hooded cloaks standing right inside the station. There hoods were up, hiding their faces, but one seemed to be about a head taller than the other.

"Are you the guys who were following us?" asked Raven. Then he tilted his head and frowned. "Are you in a cult or something?" That made everyone sweatdrop, including the two in cloaks.

"That's the first time anyone's ever asked that," said the taller figure. It was a guy.

"Really? I can see why they would think that," said the smaller figure. This one was a girl.

"Uh, can we help you?" asked Hana.

"That boy who was here a moment ago," the man paused and looked where part of Sora seemed to be sticking out of thin air. "Although I suppose he's still here. We need him."

Sora jerked back into the car for a second. He came back out, frowning. "I don't think he wants to go with you guys."

"You sure?" asked the girl. "We can help him. And he really needs help the way he is now."

Sora shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea. He seems really scared of you."

"Then we will have to take him by force." That said, the man summoned six floating lances and threw them at the kids around the invisible tram. They all had to dodge them, which was difficult since there was six lances, and the four of them were pretty close together. Pluto yelped and ran into the tram.

"You guys get in here!" shouted Sora. "That lance was stopped before it could get through the door!"

"You first!" Kaze pushed Hana (She was the closest.) into the door, and Sora pulled her the rest of the way in. Before the other two could jump in, a bunch of paper came out of nowhere and wrapped around them.

"Crap!" Raven tried to pull some of the paper off, but it was stuck like there was glue on it, and it was making it nearly impossible to move as it covered more of his body. "Where's this coming from? !"

"Guys!" Sora popped back out, grabbed Kaze, and started dragging him into the tram.

"Xaldin!"

"On it!" The man's spears split in three groups. Two aimed themselves at Kaze, one aimed itself at Sora's head, and the other three surrounded Raven. The lances were thrust forwards towards their respective targets. Fortunately, Raven managed to jerk his body back. He fell onto Kaze, which pulled Sora down. Four of the lances missed. Two managed to hit Raven in his sides. Sora quickly finished pulling Kaze into the tram, and then both dragged Raven into the tram. At that point, there was an odd clacking sound for a moment.

The girl ran forward to the track and waved her hand through the air. She sighed. "It's gone! They got away!"

"The Superior will not be pleased."

The woman reached up and removed her hood. She was a pretty young woman with brown eyes and brown hair held in a bun by a jeweled band with a lock draped over her right shoulder. "That kid probably doesn't even realize he's a Nobody…I hope nothing happens to him." She turned to her companion. "We can find him later, right?"

The man also removed his hood. He had braided hair in a topknot, noticeable sideburns, violet eyes, pointy ears, and, for some reason, hoop earrings. "He is a Nobody. The Superior will be able to track him as long as something does not cloak his signature. While it is very unlikely, there is always the chance a way will be found to do this. The fact that he is with several individuals raises those chances slightly."

The young lady sighed. "That's not good." She looked down the tracks the invisible tram had been on. "I wonder why he was so attached to them. Do you think it was because he noticed we were following them?"

"I doubt that. He was already with them when we found him. Whatever reason he had for associating with those four, it wasn't because of us." He held out a hand and a portal of darkness appeared in front of him. "Come on. We need to get back and report what happened exactly."

"Okay." She walked over, but not before glancing over her shoulder one more time towards where the invisible tram had been. "It's strange. Those kids looked really familiar, like I'd seen them before. Do you think I knew them before?"

"I wouldn't know." With that, he walked through the portal. The woman shook her head, slightly exasperated, before following him through.

As for the tram, the five kids and dog were sprawled in it, slightly stunned and confused. The inside was black with gold trim with amethyst lamps. As soon as they got over the shock that the tram had started moving on its own and they were now moving through what appeared to be a multicolored vortex, they remembered that Raven had been stabbed.

"Crap!" Raven jerked his arms out of Kaze and Sora's grip and quickly felt himself over. "Huh? That's weird. I don't feel any tears."

"But you definitely got stabbed!" said Kaze.

"We both saw it!" agreed Sora.

"He got stabbed?" asked Hana.

"Yeah, you didn't see?" asked Sora.

Hana shook her head. "The window frames kind of made it hard to see right outside the door. Do you feel any pain?" She turned her attention to Raven. "If you got stabbed, you'd definitely feel it."

"Good point. I feel okay." Raven took a closer look at his outfit. There were a couple of dents where the spears had hit him, but it didn't look like they'd been able to penetrate his bodysuit. "I guess this doubles as body armor. I am definitely keeping this now!"

"Oh come on. What are the chances that will happen again?" asked Kaze.

Raven gave him a look. "We've been up for, what? Less than a week? And we got attacked by people with weird powers in that amount of time and got stuck on an invisible tram to who knows where."

No one could really come up with a response to that. Instead, they all found a place to sit so they could wait out the ride to the mystery destination.

**Chapter End**

And there you have it. They reached Twilight Town, got into a smack down with the Disciplinary Committee, and Sora got some new clothes. Let's face it. He really needed them.

Hana didn't do any fighting in this chapter, but she'll start taking part in fights soon.

Who is the mystery kid? And who is the mystery Nobody with Xaldin? Where exactly did the invisible tram come from, and where is it going? Find out the answers to some of these in the next chapter!

**Ansem's Report:**

It has been a decade since Radiant Garden fell. A decade since my apprentices betrayed and exiled me to this dark realm. I have learned to harness the darkness so that I may come and go as I please, and I have seen how things have changed since I last saw my home.

The chaos of the Heartless has spread to many worlds, not just Radiant Garden. It seems that in trying to unravel the mysteries of the darkness, my former apprentices flooded the surrounding worlds with darkness. I suspect many have lost their lives.

However, the inhabitants of the worlds have banded together in fighting off the Heartless. The Heartless continue to increase at a steady rate though. I suspect they are fighting a losing battle. After all, Heartless simply re-spawn when destroyed. To permanently kill a Heartless, the heart must be released.

The worlds are truly in a bad state if the borders have eroded to the point that they have become aware of each other. Normally, the inhabitants would have no reason to even suspect that there are other worlds, but because of the dire situation they face they have discovered other worlds and now interact with them. I have to wonder what would happen if the borders suddenly returned to their full strength. Would the people be aware of what happened? Would they still believe in other worlds? Would they be able to return to their previous way of life?


	5. Learning Curve

Here's Chapter 5! They finally get their Keyblades and learn a bit about using them and the Heartless. I don't own anything in this story except for some of the plot elements.

**Chapter Start!**

They'd all fallen asleep while waiting for the tram to get to its destination. The boy and Hana were curled up next to each other. Pluto's head was in Sora's lap. Sora's head was tilted back, and his mouth was wide open. Raven was in a similar position with Kaze's head on his shoulder. The tram ride was quite smooth, so they weren't about to be woken up by any sudden bumps. Of course, there were other things that could wake them up.

The tram seemed to hit a barrier of some kind. It didn't slow down at all though. It just started dissolving at the point where the barrier started. The people weren't affected. They just got dumped onto the ground on the other side of the barrier, which was more than enough to wake them all up. There was a bunch of muttered complaints, cursing, and whining at the rude awakening.

"Well, this is unexpected." Everyone looked up at the speaker. It was a voluptuous woman with long, black hair, violet eyes, and an incredibly ornate, black dress and hairpiece with a crescent moon motif. She seemed amused to see the pile of bodies in front of her. "I only thought I'd be bringing the little one here."

Hana quickly grabbed the little boy. "Oh no! Those guys in the black cloaks already tried to kidnap him!"

To everyone's shock, the boy wriggled out of Hana's grip and ran over to the woman, grabbing her hand. She chuckled and ruffled his hair. "I was there when this little one is born. Since his parents are no longer in this world, I will be responsible for him from now on." The boy nodded in agreement. "Don't worry. I have his best interests in mind. I just need to take care of a few things."

"Well, what's his name then?" asked Hana.

The woman suddenly became very serious. "You may not know his true name. That would give you power over him." She looked over at him. "I will give you an alias in a little bit, but for now, go wait in the shop. I need to talk to your friends." The boy nodded again and walked into the building behind her. "Looks like I owe you. If you hadn't run into the little one, those Nobodies would have gotten him."

The quartet blinked. "Nobodies?"

"Yes, it's a rather complicated thing to explain. As the price for protecting little Kimihiro, I can either explain Nobodies to you or tell you a way to fight."

"Fight!"

"Raven!" chorused the other three.

The woman smiled. "Good for you! You're going to have to be able to defend yourself. There's a lot of monsters running around these days." She held out a hand. "Hold out your hand and think about holding a weapon." They gave her disbelieving looks. "Come on!" They reluctantly held out their hands while Pluto cocked his head in confusion at what they were doing. "Now think about holding a weapon!" They got nothing. She pouted. "Don't believe me do you?"

"It is kind of weird…" muttered Kaze.

"It's not like you haven't done it before!" The four blinked. The woman nodded. "Yeah, you've done this before. I can tell."

*Flash!*

Everyone looked over at Hana. She was staring at the odd weapon she was holding in shock. It had red hand guards, a black handle, and black shaft with the end slightly tapered and a tapered projection coming out a few inches from the end of the shaft. "What is this? !"

"Oh, it's a Keyblade. It's a weapon that certain people can summon," explained the woman. Then she narrowed her eyes at the weapon. "You are capable of wielding a Keyblade, but you should not have that Keyblade." She made a displeased noise. "There must be something interfering with your ability to wield the Keyblade that chose you…" That was just confusing for the quartet.

"Do we all have one of those?" asked Sora.

"Oh yes, you all have the power." The boys promptly went back to trying to summon a weapon, except they were actually trying this time. After a few minutes and several tries, they managed to get their Keyblades.

"Mine's the coolest!" said Raven. His was creepy and dark looking. It seemed to be composed of broken gears for the most part. The end and bottom half of the hand guards seemed to be a black and red gear, the top of the hand guards were gray metal bars, there was a blue slit eye where the hand guards met the shaft, the shaft was a gray gear and a gold gear with chains wrapped around them, the end of the shaft had another blue eye with red and black gears projecting off the end, and there was a chain coming off the end that had barbs in it and a broken gear motif at the end. The gears were more projected on one side than the other. It gave off an uneasy feeling.

"It looks kind of creepy," said Kaze. His Keyblade seemed to be made mostly of silver. The hand guards were silver with a black part in the center of them. The handle was black too. Where the hand guards met the shaft was a silver winged heart. For some reason, one of the wings was larger than the other. The shaft was silver and ended in a sort of halberd shape. The teeth of the Keyblade were a red heart with a portion missing with a right wing and an almost unnoticeable left wing. This heart was also on the charm at the end of the silver chain coming out of the Keyblade's base.

"I don't know. They're both look kind of…disturbing somehow," said Sora. His Keyblade had apparently been made from a claymore-type sword with gold inlay in the center of the blade. Between the blade and the handle was a hollow golden heart. The hand guards appeared to be made from wires arranged to resemble wings that went from gold to aqua as they descended down. The chain coming from the bottom was steel with an ivory charm that had a swirl on the right side. The sword had intricate gold wiring along the blade. The teeth was a bit more gold wiring along with another gold hollow heart (The hollow of this one seemed very familiar to Sora for some reason.) with a gold crown that looked a lot of Sora's necklace on the top of the heart.

"There, now you all have weapons to fight with," said the woman. "Now, is there anywhere in particular you want to go?" They all shook their heads. She grinned. "That's good, because I know just the place for you." Then the ground suddenly reared up and swallowed the quartet and Pluto in a sort of paint-like swirl. With that, the woman turned around and started heading back into her shop. "Maru, Moro, bring out the sake!"

As for the quartet and dog, they experienced a very disorienting trip that involved getting tossed around, psychedelic colors, and a heavy pressure on their bodies. They came to a stop quite suddenly. As they groaned at the unpleasant journey, they heard someone shouting. They looked up…and saw red. Red eyes, red curly hair, red coat, red pointy hat, red, red, red. "Are you guys okay? Where'd you come from? You just fell out of thin air!" They seemed to be right in the middle of a bunch of sandstone bleachers.

"That crazy bitch," muttered Raven. He sat up and took a look at the woman. "Think you're wearing enough red?"

She blushed, inadvertently adding more red to her features. "I just woke up in this okay! And it's not all red!" That was true. She had white gloves, a white cravat with a red crystal pin, black vest, black pants…She looked like some sort of weird aristocrat.

"Are you someone important?" asked Hana.

"No. Where'd you get that idea?"

Hana sweatdropped. "Uh, Nevermind."

"So, how did you guys appear from thin air?" The woman in red raised an eyebrow at them. "Did your world get destroyed or something?"

"We don't know," said Sora. "We just sort of woke up without any memories a few days ago."

The lady nodded like that answered her question. "That happens sometimes. When a world is destroyed, most of the inhabitants go with it, but there are usually some survivors. The survivors can be perfectly fine. Most of them are, but a lot end up with memory problems of some kind. The mildest seems to be that they just can't remember the events leading up to the destruction of their world. The most extreme cases can't even remember their names."

Kaze chuckled nervously. "We're in that category."

That made the woman raise an eyebrow. "Really? Have you come up with names to go by?"

"I'm Hana, he's Sora, he's Raven, and he's Kaze."

"Nice to meet you. My name is Scarlett."

Raven snickered. "Are you serious?"

"Well, I forgot my name too, and I figured that since I seemed to like the color…" She paused. "Wait. Why am I explaining it to you guys? There are other things to worry about. Do you know how to fight?"

Sora nodded then paused. "Except for Hana…"

"Well, Phil trains people to fight against Heartless if you're interested in that." She laughed nervously. "It takes a few days to get to his training grounds though." She got a bit thoughtful. "Of course, you could demonstrate and let me watch you for a bit. If you're pretty decent, you should be fine as long as you don't try to take on opponents way above your level."

"Uh, how would we demonstrate?" asked Kaze.

"The Coliseum is something of a training ground as well. Monsters are kept here so that trainees can fight them without worrying about getting killed. An experienced fighter watches to make sure things don't out of control."

"Sure, let's go!" said Sora.

A few minutes later, the quartet was standing in the Coliseum with their weapons out. Scarlett was messing with some cogs while Pluto was sitting in the bleachers. "Okay, I'm going to release the Monsters now. I'll start off with the weaker variety and work up." She jumped into the bleachers next to Pluto as the large gates opened. "Starting now!" Several small humanoid creatures with knives, pointy teeth, and green and orange clothing came out of the gates. "They're called Goblins. They're not that strong. You'll be able to take them out as long as you know how to use your weapons."

Raven grinned, ran up, and started slicing them apart. "This is easy!" More Goblins started running out. The other three started attacking too. Kaze and Sora were doing okay, although they weren't being as ferocious as Raven. Hana didn't seem to know what she was doing. She could hold the weapon, but she obviously didn't know how to use it. She was improvising for the most part. After a few minutes, the Goblins finally stopped coming.

"Well, you boys seem to know how to fight." Scarlett frowned at Hana. "You're new at this though. You'll need to learn how to use that sword properly. Otherwise, I suggest you become a mage."

The quartet blinked in confusion. "What do you mean by a mage?" asked Hana.

"That's just someone who uses magic for the most part." Scarlett gestured towards herself. "For example, I'm a red mage."

"Then what's the sword for?" asked Raven.

"Most Red mages are jacks of all trades. We learn some white magic, some black magic, and some swordplay to round things out. Because of this, we usually use swords as our magic conduits instead of staves."

Hana held up her Keyblade. "Could I use this as a conduit?"

"Yeah, it feels like it's some kind of magical weapon. I'm gonna release some stronger monsters to see how you guys do against them. If you've had enough, just say so."

Scarlett proceeded to release some slightly stronger versions of the goblins and some sort of humanoid fish sort of thing that Scarlett called a sahagin. The goblins weren't too bad. They just had to hit them a bit harder. The sahagins were a bit tougher and took a couple of hits. The fighting went on for roughly 15 minutes.

"Well, you guys have pretty good endurance for the most part," said Scarlett. "No offense Hana, but you need to work on your endurance. I'd suggest that you start running regularly and try lifting weights or some other muscle building exercise."

Hana sighed. She had been running around avoiding getting hit for the most part. Her attacks hadn't done much when she had done them. "I think I'll try focusing on magic."

"You still need to work on your endurance," said Scarlett. "Even if you focus on magic and you're talented, you'll be useless if you only last a minute in the fight. You also need to work on your speed and dodging skills. You can be the most powerful mage in the world, but if you get hit by an attack, you can be out in no time flat. This goes for all of you."

"Does that mean we need to be trained by Phil?" asked Sora.

Scarlett thought for a moment. "Well, you boys would probably be okay, but Hana will need training if she doesn't wanna be a damsel in distress." Hana winced.

"So, where does this Phil guy train people?" asked Kaze.

Scarlett laughed nervously. "Well, they gave me a map…" She came over and showed them the map. It had been scribbled on the back of a menu and was pretty messy looking. "I can't tell where it is…And my sense of direction is pretty bad even with good maps. I usually just keep people who want to be trained around until he makes a trip here."

"How often does he do that?" asked Raven.

"Every couple of months or so."

"That long? !"

Scarlett sighed. "I know. I asked him to come by more often or have people come to act as escorts at least. I'd take you, but I'm sort of in charge of keeping things in order here. You could see if any of the warriors in the surrounding area are willing to take you there I guess."

"How long since he was last here?" asked Kaze.

"He was actually here just last week…"

"You gotta be kidding me!" shouted Raven. "You expect us to wait around for two months just so Hana can learn to dodge and hit stuff? !"

"Well, I could show you guys how to use magic." The quartet blinked.

"You could show us magic?" asked Sora. The idea sort of excited him. Magic was cool.

"Yeah, most of the people who show up either have no magical talent, are incapable of using it due to the world they're from, or their abilities are limited to one particular sub-type. You guys seem to actually have some potential though." She nodded with a smile. "It's a nice change. It kind of annoys me how there are so few people capable of being decent mages."

"And you can tell that we can use magic just by looking at us?" asked Hana.

"Of course not. I can tell by watching you fight. Your energies reacted to the situations in particular ways that I was able to sense and analyze. I do it with everyone that comes here to see if they're capable of using magic."

"So, what can we do?" asked Raven.

"Well, Sora and Hana should be able to use both black and white magic. Kaze can only use white magic. Raven can only use black magic."

"What's the difference between the two?" asked Sora.

"White magic is for defense and healing. Black magic is for offense."

"Does that mean I get to blow stuff up?" asked Raven. Scarlett nodded. "Awesome! Let's get started!"

The next couple of hours were spent getting a crash course in spell casting. When it started getting dark, Scarlett gave them some pallets and told them to find somewhere comfortable to sleep. She then demonstrated by picking a seemingly random spot, lying down, and going to sleep. Seems she lives in the Coliseum…

The next day started with Scarlett telling them they had to leave the Coliseum.

"What gives? I thought you were gonna teach us magic," said Raven.

"There's a tournament at the Coliseum every other day," explained Scarlett. "I'm in charge of them. I take down entries, set up who fights who, referee, and occasionally have to keep people from dying."

"Well, do you think you can let us enter?" asked Kaze.

"Not this one," said Scarlett. "You're required to be at a certain level. Plus, you have to be okayed by Phil, and since he's not here, you can't enter. Sorry. You'll have to wait until tomorrow for me to teach you some more magic. You can try practicing what I showed you yesterday until then though."

"Where?" asked Sora. "We're new here. We don't know where anything is."

"Good point." Scarlett led them outside and looked around for a bit. "Mulan! Could you come over here for a moment?"

A pretty oriental girl who'd been walking by came over. She had long black hair, and was wearing what looked like a combination between samurai armor and a kimono or something. A katana in a scabbard was hanging on her hip next to a simple brown pouch. "Hi, Scarlett. Who are these four?"

"New arrivals. I was teaching them a bit of magic yesterday." She turned towards the quartet and gestured at the armored girl. "Guys, this here is Mulan. She's one of the people who have been trained by Phil." She grinned and leaned in to whisper. "He likes training pretty girls." Hana blushed while the boys snickered a bit. Scarlett turned back to Mulan. "Were you planning to enter the tournament?"

Mulan scratched the back of her head nervously. "I'm not that good at fighting…" Scarlett sighed.

"You're never gonna improve if you keep that attitude."

"I know, but I just…I don't know." Seems Mulan had some self-confidence problems.

"Well, would you mind giving these guys a tour? Since you're not entering the tournament."

"Sure." She smiled over at the quartet. "Is there anything in particular you're looking for?"

"Food," said Raven. Scarlett had given them some dried meat yesterday, but they were getting pretty hungry now.

"Um, I'm kind of running low on munny," said Mulan. "We'll have to fight some Heartless to get munny."

"Do you get paid for doing that?" asked Kaze.

"Oh, right. Scarlett said you're new so I guess you wouldn't know." Mulan reached into her pouch and pulled out a small piece of munny. "Heartless drop these things when they're destroyed. The normal currency of this world is these coins…I think they're called drachma or something. Most worlds have completely different currencies. This sometimes made things confusing though so everyone decided to use munny as a sort of universal currency, since Heartless drop these everywhere, at least until the Heartless are taken care of. Plus, the people who fight Heartless usually don't have the time to get normal jobs, so this gives them a way to afford food and housing and clothes."

"So we can just attack Heartless instead of doing people's chores?" asked Raven.

"Yeah, although if you'd rather do chores you can."

"That's not what he means," said Hana. "It's the main currency in the world we were in before, but there aren't any Heartless there."

Mulan frowned. "Huh, that's weird." Some Heartless popped up. "Okay, let's see what we can do!"

Mulan did know how to use a sword, despite what she said. She also knew how to use at least some fire magic. Pluto stayed out of the fight but did bring them some munny from somewhere. This combined with what they got from killing Heartless was enough for breakfast. They found a small place that sold fruit and stopped there. They also managed to get some meat for Pluto.

"You guys are pretty good," said Mulan. "Did you know how to fight before you ended up here?"

"We don't know," said Kaze.

Mulan winced. "Amnesia?" They nodded. "I have some too. It's really weird. I know my name is Fa Mulan, I know I'm from China, I know what the world I'm like is from, but I can't actually remember what my life was like."

"That sounds confusing," said Hana.

Mulan nodded. "Yeah…"

At that moment, an odd looking ship of some kind went flying over them. Sora's head shot up to follow it. "What is that? !"

"Oh, that's a gummi ship," said Mulan. "They're used to travel from one world to another."

"It looks cool!" Everyone looked at Sora. His eyes were wide and sparkling like a kid at Christmas.

"We could go to the gummi garage," suggested Mulan. "You need to know where to find it anyway. If it's one of the nicer Cids, I'm sure they'll let you have a closer look."

"Really? ! Let's go!"

Since Sora was so excited, they decided to head on over. Raven had a question though. "What do you mean by Cids? Is there a couple of guys with the same name?"

Mulan chuckled. "It's weird, but all the people who pilot the gummi ships in the gummi taxi service are named Cid."

Hana tilted her head. "Gummi taxi service?"

"It's for people who don't own gummis themselves. That's pretty much everyone else because the gummi parts are really, really expensive."

It was a building that stuck out from the surrounding structures. It looked like a modern garage. It had a picture of a gummi ship on the top. Mulan walked right in so it must be a really casual business. She cupped her hands around her mouth. "Cid? ! Are you here?"

They heard a loud clang. Then a short man with a frizzy brown beard, goggles, and a black sleeveless jumpsuit poked his head out from under the gummi ship. "Yeah, what is it?"

"Can I look at the ship?" aked Sora.

"Sure, looking's free." Sora immediately ran over and started looking over the ship. "New at this?"

"Yeah, we lost our world a few days ago," said Hana. That's what she's assuming anyway. It would explain why they ended up in the same place with no memories.

"Well, if you ever need to go to another world, just come to me or one of the other old farts that runs this!" Everyone sweatdropped at how he referred to his supposed partners. "'Course, it costs 200 munny a person!" Pluto barked. "Pets are 100 munny."

"That's expensive," said Kaze.

"It takes munny to maintain the ships, and we have to get the munny somewhere!" That was a good point. After letting Sora explore the ship, they dragged him away so they could practice their magic some.

So far, all they'd learned was Fire and Cure. Hana had actually managed to figure out how to use both so she was helping the boys figure out how to use them. Mulan also helped give Sora and Raven some pointers. She couldn't really help Kaze. After a couple of hours, Kaze managed to use Cure and Raven managed to use Fire. It took Sora longer, mainly because he'd had two spells to learn. At that point, they were getting hungry so they killed some more Heartless to get some food.

"What do you guys usually do around here?" asked Raven.

"Well, I usually fight the Heartless that I know I can handle," said Mulan. "I also train so that I won't lose my edge. When I have spare time, I hang out with other people."

"That's it?"

"There's not a lot to do here…especially if you're short on munny."

"Have you ever been to another world?" asked Kaze.

Mulan made a face. "Well, I originally was on a world that full of tall buildings and rude people. I prefer this one. I'm glad Leon found me."

"Are all worlds that different?" asked Sora. "I mean there's Twilight Town, this place, that weird shop…What other worlds are out there?"

"There's supposed to be a world that's almost completely underwater," said Mulan. "You have to use magic and change form to go there and survive."

"Cool…I wonder what the other worlds are like," mused Hana. "Do you think we could ever see them?"

"All we'd have to do is get…" Raven took a moment to calculate the fee. "800 munny, 900 if we take the mutt with us." Pluto barked.

"You can't just go!" said Mulan. "Some of the Heartless on other worlds are really strong!"

"Well, if we get munny by killing Heartless, we can train and learn to deal with them while earning munny for travel fare," pointed out Sora.

"And we can ask Cid which worlds are the safest to go to," said Kaze. "We can start with those and work our way up."

Raven grinned. "Then it's settled. We're gonna check out the other worlds!"

**End chapter!**

None of the Keyblades are original creations! They are all canon! They're just hard to describe!

Scarlett is not an original character. Feel free to guess who she is.

It is impossible to resist putting Yuuko into Kingdom Hearts. She's like a crazy Japanese version of Yen Sid! Okay, maybe not the best comparison…

Yeah, the choice to travel to other worlds was a bit sudden, but they all had some sort of wanderlust not too long before they lost their hearts, so some of it carried over. Plus, they're still kids, and this is something that would excite a kid.


	6. Raxkii

This will not focus on our quartet. It will focus on someone else. I don't own any of the characters, just some of the plot of the story.

This chapter switches between POVs several times. I tried asterisks, but they didn't work so I'm gonna try something else.

By the way, the italics are thoughts.

**Chapter Start!**

The quartet were discussing how much munny they were going to need for traveling. Mulan had asked to be left out of it and had left, presumably to train and earn munny for her own needs.

"So, how much munny do we have left over from lunch?" asked Kaze.

"32 munny," said Hana. "That means we need 868 for our tickets."

"We're taking the mutt?" asked Raven. Pluto let out a bark.

Hana frowned and put her hands on her hips. "We are not leaving Pluto on his own!"

"We should probably get some more munny for food and stuff too," said Sora.

"That's gonna take forever!" complained Raven.

"Well, I don't want to starve, do you?" said Kaze. He had a point. This was going to take a while.

*Break!*

Riku looked around as he stepped out of a dark portal. This world didn't feel like the other worlds he'd been in. It felt like it had both light and darkness in it. It looked pretty peaceful though. From what he could see on the rooftop he was on, there were people walking around, talking, shopping, normal everyday things. No Heartless were popping up, which was unusual. All the other worlds he'd explored had them. Deciding not to worry about it, he absentmindedly jumped down from the roof he'd arrived on. Riku had grown over the year. He was taller, and he'd had to replace his clothes. He'd settled on blue jeans, black and yellow sneakers, and a green T-shirt with a smiling black cat with swirly yellow eyes. He hadn't bothered to trim his hair so some of it was hanging in his eyes, obscuring them somewhat.

Riku felt like there was something special about this world, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Maybe it was just because of the light/dark way this world felt. "Well, maybe I can find something useful here…" So far, everywhere else had been a dead end. It was really annoying.

After a few moments of thinking, Riku decided to head towards the huge hole he'd seen in the wall surrounding the town. Maybe it led somewhere interesting.

Turned out there was a forest on the other side. "This place sure is peaceful. No Heartless at all." Riku wandered through it for a while and found an old mansion. Maybe the forest had been planted around it? The forest didn't seem as big as it should be if it was natural. The mansion was blocked off by a large gate held shut by a chain and padlock. Riku smirked. That would keep anyone else out, but not him. He summoned the Keyblade and quickly used it to unlock the gate. After all, the locked places were the most interesting.

Meanwhile, the ticket teller over at the station decided to take her lunch break and left. As soon as she did, a dark corridor opened and two people in black cloaks came out of it. "Finally." The young man with slate colored hair covering his right eye walked over to one of the tracks and started sniffing.

"What do you think the invisible tram looked like?"

He gave his partner for the mission a look. "It was invisible. It didn't look like anything."

The girl tilted her head. She looked to be about 12. She had blond hair that went to the small of her back and big blue eyes that were usually staring off into space. The oddest thing about her was the hat on her head. It was a dark green top hat with some gold designs stitched onto it, an orange ribbon tied in a bow, and several hatpins stuck into the knot of the bow. "But if it didn't look like anything, then it wouldn't have been. It certainly was though, so it must have looked like something."

"…This is why Luxord is the only one willing to go on missions with you." She was a nice girl, very polite, she just had such strange logic and she always felt like sharing it with anyone nearby. He didn't think she was all there. He turned his attention back to the track and started sniffing again. He was getting five scents. One smelled of sea salt and fruit. Another one smelled of flowers. One smelled sort of musty with a hint of nuts. Another smelled like fresh linen with a metallic undertone. The last one smelled of…darkness. That was strange. It was very rare for a person to smell dark. Usually they just looked or acted dark. He didn't think it would be the Nobody they were looking for since he was lacking a heart and all.

"Zexion, I'm confused. Why are we tracking Nobodies by scent?"

Zexion let out an exasperated sigh. "Because despite the fact that we don't exist we still have scents. We've gone over this before."

"I still don't understand how something that doesn't exist can have a scent. After all, nothing can't have a scent."

Zexion twitched. He couldn't wait to get back to The World that never was so he could give her back to Luxord. He was the only one with the patience and mindset to explain how these sorts of things worked to her.

Back in the mansion, Riku had managed to find a secret room. It had a computer with a bunch of files on it. Most were encoded so Riku couldn't look at them. That annoyed Riku to the point that he considered bashing the computer over a few times with the Keyblade. He reigned that urge in though and instead looked around for anything that would get him access to the files. He decided to just leave it. After all, it probably didn't have anything to do with Kairi or the Heartless. At that point, he was getting hungry so he decided to go back to town and get something to eat. Maybe he'd take a look at that clock tower. It sort of reminded him of Big Ben.

Up on the clock tower Riku was thinking about, two redheads were eating sea salt ice cream while watching the sunset. One was a man with bright, spiky red hair, vibrant green eyes, and upside-down tear drop tattoos under his eyes. The other one was a younger girl with darker red hair that went to about the small of her back with a lock draped over her right shoulder and blue eyes. Both were wearing black cloaks. The girl seemed to be deep in thought. The man looked over at her and noticed her ice cream was starting to drip. "You know, if you don't hurry, your ice cream is going to melt," he said.

"Oh." She quickly brought it up to her lips and licked away the melting ice cream. "Axel…Who were the people Xaldin and Xelbel ran into yesterday?"

Axel shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't see them. I got the general description, but there are lots of people who could fit these descriptions."

"But one of them had spiky brown hair and blue eyes." She clenched at her popsicle stick. "Do you think…Could it be Sora?"

Axel shrugged. "Beats me. I never met either of the guys. Your other knew Sora, right?"

She nodded. "They were best friends up until Riku betrayed him." Axel gave her a worried look. She'd spat out Riku's name like it was poison, and her face suggested she wanted to hurt something.

"Well, if you ever meet him, you can tell me if the two are the same person." With that, Axel stood up and stretched with a loud yawn. "Well, I've had a busy day, so I'm gonna head on back and turn in. You coming?"

The girl shook her head, staring off towards the sunset. "No, I'll stay a bit longer."

Axel shrugged. "Suit yourself." He opened a portal and left.

The girl sighed as she watched the perpetual sunset. She licked at her ice cream a bit. It had gotten pretty mushy and had melted all over her gloved hand. She licked some of that off too. She sighed and let her head fall. "Sora…" Then she saw something in front of the station that made her eyes widen.

"This ice cream isn't too bad," mused Riku as he finished his trek to the clock tower. He'd decided to buy a stick of sea salt ice cream. He'd never heard of it, and he liked trying new things. "I wonder why it's blue though. It was sweet and salty." Sugar and salt wouldn't make it blue. Maybe it was some coloring. Riku paused as he suddenly felt some very strong killing intent. This was odd since there weren't any sorts of monsters in this town, and he hadn't been there long enough to get on anyone's bad side. He quickly jumped back as a girl cut through where he'd just been with a very unique weapon.

Riku's eyes widened. That girl had a Keyblade! Its teeth seemed to be made of flowers, the shaft looked like a sunset, the hand guards were a wave and a vine of sand that wrapped around the shaft, and the chain was a red ribbon with a paopu fruit on the end. Riku was slightly confused. _"There's more than one Keyblade?"_ Then his eyes went to the girl holding it. His eyes widened when he saw what she looked like. "Kairi? !" The girl let out a battle yell and swung at him, clearly intending to cut his head off. Riku jumped back and summoned his own Keyblade just in time to block another strike. "Calm down!" He had to keep blocking strikes. "It's me, Riku!" She jumped back at that. Riku was hoping that had snapped her out of it. It didn't. She just jumped back so she could start throwing spells at him. Riku blocked a Firaga and dodged a Blizzaga. "Okay, I don't know why you're angry, but whatever it is I did, I'm sorry!"

"That's not good enough!" She used Thundaga several times in a row, which resulted in Riku finally getting hit.

The two actually had an audience, the little blonde girl in the top hat who was watching from the station located right beneath the clock tower. "Zexion, Raxkii is murdering a boy."

"What?" Zexion turned to look out the station doors. "What is that girl thinking? !" He groaned. "Help me break them up."

"They're dating?"

"No! The other kind of break up!"

"Oh…"

And that was when things got rather odd for Riku and his mystery attacker. The environment around them started warping. Then they were both somewhere else entirely. The girl was on a sunny tropical island. She looked around in shock. "Destiny Islands? !"

Riku was in Hollow Bastion for some reason, right in front of the Keyhole. "Hey, where'd Kairi go?" They also couldn't see each other. Then the scenery flicked and he was back in Twilight Town. The girl was gone. Riku frowned in confusion. "What was that all about?"

As for the girl, she was in a stark white hallway with Zexion and the blonde holding her back somewhat. She broke out of their hold and whirled around with a furious look on her face. "Why did you do that? !"

"I believe that was the boy with the Keyblade," stated Zexion. "We need to keep him alive for now to speed up the completion of Kindom Hearts."

"I don't care! He deserves to die!"

"Is he your ex-boyfriend?" asked the blonde. She was given a horrified look by the slightly older girl.

"No!"

"Raxkii, you are not to harm Riku…for now," said Zexion. "After Kingdom Hearts is complete, you can do whatever you want to him."

She let out a yell of rage and stormed off.

"Why is Raxkii angry at the boy with the silver hair?" asked the blonde.

"He killed her best friend," explained Zexion. "It seems she was able to hang on to that anger even after she lost her heart."

Riku sat on the station steps looking off into the sunset. _"Why did Kairi attack me? She recognized me, didn't she?"_ He let out a frustrated sigh as he ran his hands through his hair. _"I finally managed to find her, and this is what happens…Maybe I can find her again."_ Riku nodded as he stood up and started pacing. _"If I do find her again, maybe I can get her to tell me what's wrong. If I can find that out, I should be able to fix it."_ Riku nodded again. _"The only problem is…where did she go?"_ When she disappeared, he was in the Hollow Bastion illusion so he didn't see where she went. _"How did she have a Keyblade anyway? I thought there was only one of those…I'll figure that out later. So the things that stuck out were that Keyblade and that black coat she was wearing. It's not the kind of thing she'd usually wear…Maybe she has to wear it for some reason?"_ Considering what Kairi usually liked to wear, that seemed to be the most likely reason. _"Now, where would Kairi go?"_ Really, Kairi had been unconscious when he still knew where she was. Because of this, he didn't know if there were any worlds in particular that she liked. _"Well, maybe I can look around this world for a bit and then check any worlds that Kairi might like…"_ With that in mind, Riku walked back into the main part of town to ask the townsfolk if they'd seen a redheaded girl in a black cloak.

*Break!*

"Man, you guys always win when you enter," said Scarlett as she handed the prize money over to the tournament winners. "Couldn't you go a little easy on the others just once?"

"Hey, we earned this," said Yuffie. "Some of those guys are starting to get pretty good."

Scarlett smiled. "That's good to hear. Maybe we'll finally be able to do something about the Heartless."

Leon frowned. "It'll only be temporary. To get rid of them permanently, we need a Keyblade."

"Oh no, I am not working with Riku!" said Yuffie. "The guy's a total psycho! It's like the second coming of Sephiroth!"

"I know, and I think he's allied himself with the Heartless anyway," said Leon. "I doubt we can get any help from him, but maybe someone can get the Keyblade from him."

"Well, good luck with that," said Scarlett. "I'll see you around. If you ever need any help dealing with Heartless, just send me a message."

Leon nodded. "Well, be seeing you then." The two started walking away.

Scarlett put a hand up to her chin in thought. "Now that I think about it, I didn't tell those kids when to come back. Oh well, I'll go clean up. If they're not back by nightfall, I'll start looking for them."

Scarlett took about an hour to clean things up. It mostly consisted of burning monster bodies (The empty brackets had been filled with monsters.), dumping the bloody dirt in the compost pile, and scrubbing some blood off the floor. By that time, it was starting to get dark, so she went by the entrance to wait for the quartet and dog to get back.

After the sun had set, Scarlett was considering going out to look for them, but was spared from that when she saw the group dragging themselves down the street. After a couple of minutes, they'd reached Scarlett. She raised her eyebrow. The quartet looked pretty beat up. Even Pluto looked beat up and tired and she could tell that he was not a dog who jumps into fights. "What happened to you guys?"

"We were trying to get munny to go traveling," explained Sora.

"You want to go traveling, and you don't even know your own limits?" She sighed. "You can't go traipsing around the worlds and survive if you fight everything you run across."

"We got enough munny," pointed out Raven.

Scarlett blinked. "Seriously? That would have taken hours…No wonder you guys are in such bad shape. Get in there and get some sleep." The five decided to listen to her. They got to sleep almost before they hit the pallets and didn't wake up once during the night.

**End Chapter!**

Raxkii hates Riku a lot. She actually likes dog poop more than him. So Riku has to deal with her.

That is three new Nobodies in the Organization. Have you figured out who they are?


	7. The Chesapeake

And here's Chapter 7. When I wrote this I decided to just let myself go and see how long it would end up being. It's a bit longer than usual because of this. How long the chapters will be from this point on is debatable.

I'm sorry it took so long to update. I had some projects to finish, finals, and then had the MCAT (The last one was the most traumatizing test I ever took.). I either didn't have time to write, or just couldn't get into the mood. Now that it's summer, I should hopefully write more.

As an apology for taking so long, I will post a short story called 'A Boy and His Heartless.' It'll be in the crossover section though due to the main character in it.

As usual, I don't own anything except for the plot, and some of that is borrowed as well, all things considered.

**Chapter Start!**

The next morning, Scarlett decided to talk to the quartet about their plan. "If you want to go traveling about the worlds, you either have to be real good at fighting or be smart about how you travel and fight. For example, you guys are fairly new at this." She held up a hand as Raven opened his mouth. "Don't interrupt me Raven. By new I mean, you've forgotten pretty much everything from before a few days ago, correct?" They nodded. "So even if you did know how to fight, you've forgotten how, and while being fast and strong is important in fighting, that's only the half of it. You need to know how to move, read your opponents' moves, dodge, use your environment, and so on and so forth. In other words, you need experience to be good fighters. You could probably become good fighters, but you'll need to survive for that. As such, I suggest you go to the worlds where the Heartless do not have such a strong hold and are considerably weaker. I'd suggest the Chesapeake. The Heartless are fairly weak and the natives are willing to help. They refuse to leave their world, but most people refuse to do that, so that's not important. What's important is that as long as you don't insult or hurt them, they will help you out if you need it." Scarlett's lecture had left their heads spinning somewhat. They were willing to agree just to get her to stop.

"Okay, we'll go to the Chesapeake first," said Hana.

Scarlett continued to lecture anyway. "I also think you four need to know more than just two spells. There are Heartless that are resistant to fire or just plain absorb it."

Raven rolled his eyes. "Can't we just hit them?"

Scarlett nodded. "Yeah, but some of them can be difficult to hit, especially if they're speedy." At this point, Scarlett drew out her rapier. "So, I'll show you four one spell from each category."

Kaze raised an eyebrow. "You're just showing us? Not teaching us?"

Scarlett gestured at Sora and Raven. "Those two are obviously impatient to leave. If I don't let you guys leave as soon as possible, they are just going to be impossible to be around. Besides, Hana seems quite talented at this. I'm sure she'll figure out how to use them." Hana blushed at the praise. "And then she can teach you boys. You'll be on your own for other spells until you decide you want to come back to the Coliseum though."

"So, what're the spells?" asked Sora.

"Blizzard." She shot a blast of ice out of her sword and into the Coliseum wall. "And Barrier." She held the sword out in front of her in a vertical position and a nearly invisible sphere with a green tint appeared around her. "It protects against physical damage."

"Okay, we're gonna go now." Vanitas grabbed Kaze and Sora and ran out of there with Pluto running after them. Hana waved to Scarlett and quickly followed the boys. Scarlett shook her head.

"Those kids need to learn to some patience." Then she did a facepalm and groaned. "They're making me sound so old…" The red mage sighed and walked back into the coliseum.

*Break!*

"Chesapeake, huh? Nice place! It doesn't have any large towns like in the other worlds. The natives live in these tent things that they call teepees and wigwams. The land's preserved much better than the other's. A real beauty!" Cid had decided to tell them all about the world they were going to. He'd also taken to slipping treats to Pluto. "They use bows and arrows and these ax things to fight, but they convinced us to give them some other weapons. They aren't so good at the complicated stuff, but they're getting the hang of guns."

"Hey, how long does this ride take anyway?" asked Raven.

"It depends on how many Heartless ships we run into."

The quartet blinked. "Huh?"

"Yeah, it turns out they have ships too! Weird isn't it?" Then a sort of alarm went off and a bunch of gummi ships appeared in front of them. "Speak of the devil! The first wave!"

"There's so many…How do you avoid them?" asked Kaze.

"You can't avoid them! You gotta blast through them!" The adolescents' eyes widened and they quickly strapped themselves in.

Roughly half an hour later, they finally reached the world. It was covered in greenery with rivers threading in it with a few teepees on it. The quartet's fingers were digging into the armrests of their chairs, except for Sora. Pluto had jumped onto Sora halfway through the first wave and Sora had been holding onto him. "First time's always the hardest! Let's land!" Cid changed the direction of the ship slightly and they zoomed towards the world.

The gummi ship landed in a small clearing. A board with a gummi ship on it was nailed to a nearby tree along with a button. "Okay, some worlds don't have an available garage, so we use this instead."

The quartet gave it a look. Sora was the one who voiced their disbelief. "A sign and a button?"

Cid nodded. "The button sends out a distress signal. It's for emergencies only, so don't push it unless you need to be picked up right away. The times when we come here to pick up anyone who wants to leave this world are written on the board. Just show up at one of those times, and one of us will show up to pick you up. Just make sure you have the munny."

"Um, right, thanks," said Hana.

"No problem! Be seeing you kids around!" Cid walked back into the gummi ship and flew off into the sky with it.

"That guy sure is loud," mused Sora.

"There's a lot of trees here," noted Hana. "I wonder what else is around here."

So they started to explore. There were some Heartless, but they were weak like Scarlett had said. They were mostly Shadows, but there were also some that were a bit bigger and were dressed up like Indians with tomahawks or bows and arrows. The environment was quite beautiful too. The land was undeveloped so it was all plants, rivers, and wild animals. It was really quite peaceful and relaxing, except for the Heartless.

"I really like it here," said Sora. "Let's take our time gathering funds for the next world."

"But it's boring!" complained Raven. "There's no one here strong enough for a decent fight!"

"You're a violent person, aren't you?" commented Kaze.

Raven paused. Now that he thought about it, he probably did enjoy killing Heartless a little too much. Was that good or bad? He decided to just shrug it off. "Well, there are plenty of Heartless to kill at least."

"What if the Heartless go away?" asked Hana.

"Well, there are always those monsters at the Coliseum." Everyone gave Raven a 'You can't be serious' look, even Pluto. "What?"

Kaze just shook his head. "We gotta get you a new hobby."

Sora suddenly sat down. "We're getting kind of antsy. Let's take a break and eat lunch."

"Fine."

"Yeah, that sounds good."

They all sat down and started out pulling out some food they'd bought before leaving the Coliseum. Since they couldn't use cans (no can openers) and didn't want food that would spoil in a couple of days, they'd ended up buying almost nothing but dried meat (and a bone for Pluto) and fruit. They found out some things a little too late because of this.

Hana's eyebrow twitched. "So none of you guys like apples?" The boys all shook their heads. As soon as they'd tried the dried apples, they'd realized they could not stand the taste. She sighed. "Couldn't you guys have found out about that before we bought the food?"

"In our defense, we couldn't remember what we liked at the time," pointed out Kaze.

"Maybe we could trade fruits with you?" suggested Sora. "We have other fruits."

Hana nibbled on her apple piece. Well, she liked them. "Okay, but next time, let's check and see if we like the food before we buy a bunch of it."

Raven suddenly started. "Hey! Get out of there!" He grabbed at the bag that they were keeping their food in, and lifted something out. It took a second for the others to figure out it was a raccoon eating a piece of dried apple.

"Did that just try to eat our food?" asked Kaze.

Raven nodded. Sora grabbed it from him and looked it in the eye. The raccoon cocked its head curiously. "It's not acting like a wild animal…" He put it down. It didn't try running away. It just continued eating the apple piece it had nicked.

"Maybe it's someone's pet," suggested Hana. That was when it finished the slice. It immediately ran over to the pack but was intercepted by Raven.

"Oh no you don't! Do you have any idea how long it took to get the munny for this stuff? !"

"Oh come on." Sora held out an apple slice that the raccoon quickly grabbed. "Hana's the only one that likes these anyway." The raccoon turned to the side and started waving the slice in the air. Sora blinked. "What's it doing?"

"Maybe it's got a friend over there," suggested Kaze. He walked over to the bushes and started pushing them away, but stopped when something shot out and hit him in the head. "Gah!" He stumbled back as it kept hitting him in the head. Pluto decided to defend the blond and started running around Kaze barking. The raccoon got out of Raven's grip and joined Pluto in running around Kaze. So Kaze was trying to keep the flying projectile from hitting him again and trying to keep from tripping over two animals at the same time. Raven couldn't help laughing. Neither could Sora. Hana on the other hand…

"Stop!" Everyone froze, including what was attacking Kaze. It turned out to be a small hummingbird. "Sit!" Everyone sat. "Just the animals…" The boys stood back up. The raccoon started nibbling on its apple slice. "What was that about?"

"Maybe its nest is over there," said Sora. "Birds don't like it when you get close to their nest." The bird gave him a glare.

"I've had enough of crazy animals," said Raven. "Can we move on?"

That seemed like a good idea so they moved on, but the Raccoon decided to climb up Sora and perch itself on his shoulder. It was probably hoping for more treats from him. The hummingbird was trying to pull him off and was failing due to the fact that the raccoon was much bigger. They weren't really sure what to do about these two, so they just let them be while they dealt with any Heartless they came across. The animals knew to stay out of the way at least. Then Hana used Blizzard out of the blue. She instantly got a big grin on her face.

"I got it!"

"Have you been trying to figure out how to use that since we got here?" asked Kaze.

Hana nodded. "Yep!"

"What about that force field one?" asked Sora.

"That's a bit more difficult. Plus I have to test it by letting a Heartless attack me."

"One of us could attack you," suggested Raven. That made them pause.

"I guess that could work, but let's wait, okay," said Hana. She didn't relish the idea of getting hit with one of their weird Keyblades. Who knows what it could do to them.

Shortly after Hana figured out how to use Blizzard, the raccoon started to get restless. It started scurrying from one shoulder to another and looking over to the side quite a bit. The hummingbird had disappeared as well. It put everyone on edge in case they had noticed something the kids hadn't. Then they heard a surprised shout from off to the side. They immediately ran over and saw some Heartless surrounding a young woman with long dark hair and a buckskin dress. She had a spear, but she was clutching at her arm. There was some blood noticeably welling out from between the fingers. The quartet immediately ran in and started attacking the Heartless. They only took a couple of moments to get rid of them even though they had to make sure the woman didn't get attacked. They must be getting a bit better at it. After they got rid of the Heartless, the woman bowed her head.

"Thank you. I didn't notice the Heartless until they attacked me." The raccoon then jumped from Sora's shoulder to hers.

"Is that your raccoon?" asked Sora.

She shook her head. "Meeko doesn't belong to anyone…except for maybe himself."

"Would you like us to look at your arm?" asked Hana. "We know a little white magic."

The woman nodded with a smile. "I would appreciate that. Thank you." Fortunately, it wasn't a very bad injury so a Cure was all it took to fix it. The woman flexed and rotated her arm a bit. "Thank you very much. My name is Pocahontas."

"Sora."

"Hana."

"Kaze."

"Raven."

"You don't look like you're from around here. Are you from the sky?"

Kaze blinked. "Sky?"

"Yes, lately people have been coming from the sky on large colorful birds." She must have been talking about gummi ships. "Most of them have pale skin." Well, they were pale compared to her. "They usually only stay for a few days, but one has stayed here for several months now."

"Why wouldn't anyone want to stay here?" asked Hana. "It's beautiful."

Pocahontas nodded in agreement. "I know, but most people say they're used to more…convenient lodgings. I'm not exactly sure what they mean by that."

"They probably want toilets and running water," said Raven.

Pocahontas cocked her head in confusion. "Toilets?"

"Uh, don't worry about that," said Kaze. "It's nothing important."

"Hey, where do you live?" asked Sora. "We want to find a place to stay when it gets dark."

"Yes, of course." So, Pocahontas started leading the way for them. It took a while to get there, probably because of the Heartless they had to take care of. Pocahontas turned out to know how to use the spear well enough to fight the Heartless, which was quite helpful. Eventually, they reached a large group of teepees and other buildings made of buckskin. "This is my village."

"It's a lot smaller than Twilight Town or the Coliseum," noted Kaze.

"Are one of those your village?"

"Uh…" They shifted nervously before Sora gave a quick explanation. "We don't remember where we're from."

Pocahontas winced. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"It's okay," said Hana. "Where is everyone anyway?"

"The women are tending to the crops, the men are fighting the monsters, and the children are probably learning how to fight away from the village so they don't destroy anything," explained Pocahontas. "It shouldn't be completely deserted though…" She walked into the central buckskin building. Since there wasn't anyone else around, they walked in shortly after her. Inside were a few older people with gray hair working on various things. It looked like they were making clothes and food and stuff. Pocahontas was talking to one man with particularly long gray hair. When she saw them, she waved them over. "This is Kekata, our village's shaman. These are the children I told you about."

"We're not kids," proclaimed Raven. That made Kekata chuckle.

"Of course not. Pocahontas says you know how to fight." They nodded. "While it is unfortunate that young ones must know how to fight, it seems to be the only way to survive since the shadow creatures started appearing."

"You mean the Heartless?" asked Hana.

"Yes, that is what the other sky people call them, but how can we know if they have hearts or not?" Kekata had a point there. "Now, why exactly have you come here?"

"We just wanted to see what it was like here," said Sora.

The older man chuckled. "Is that so? Most sky people stay here for but a short time before leaving. Quistis is the only one who has chosen to stay."

"Who's Quistis?" asked Kaze

"She is a woman with yellow hair and clothing like yours," explained Pocahontas. "She has a strange weapon. She calls it a whip. She has been teaching us how to use some of the strange weapons other sky people leave here."

"Oh, so she's sort of like a trainer?" asked Kaze. Pocahontas crossed her arms in thought.

"She called herself a mercenary…" The quartet blinked at that.

"If she's a mercenary, does that mean she's getting paid to do this?" asked Raven.

"We're not really sure," admitted Pocahontas. "But she seems to have a good heart. I'm sure she's doing it of her own free will."

Raven grinned. "Let's go see what she can do." He ran over to the exit.

"That won't be necessary," said Kekata. "She and the warriors of our village will be returning soon. It is getting late, and at night there are many more of the shadow creatures." Raven frowned.

"What do we do until then?"

"Take a moment to rest. There's no reason to push yourself."

Raven frowned. "That's boring though."

"You should enjoy the life you have now. You never know when you will lose this luxury."

The group decided to listen the shaman. They spent the next couple of hours relaxing, playing with Pluto and Meeko, or practicing their spells very carefully. When the sun was starting to set, several people started to enter the village. The first influx was of women and children who looked at the group curiously. The second group was of men with various weapons and one woman who dressed and looked very different from the natives.

This woman had long blonde hair. The bangs were left to frame her face, but the rest of it seemed to be gathered into a half bun in the back of her head. Her eyes were icy blue and behind a pair of glasses. She had a pink zip-up vest unzipped towards the bottom, showing off her bellybutton. On her arms were what looked like dark red sleeves that had been disconnected from the rest of the outfit. She was also wearing black gloves. She had a long pink skirt on with black pants under it and a pair of black shoes. She had a brown belt hanging off one hip and a chain whip on the other. She immediately noticed the group and walked over to them.

"Who're you? I've never seen you before."

"I'm Kaze. That's Raven. That's Sora. And that's Hana."

"Did Leon send you?" They shook their heads. "You just decided to come here?"

Sora nodded. "Yeah! We wanted to see other worlds!"

Quistis sighed. "Kids…"

Raven took offense at that. "Hey! You're a mercenary, right?"

"Yeah, although I've had to put that job on hold…"

Raven grinned. "Fight me!"

Quistis had to blink at that. "What?"

"Raven likes fighting," explained Hana.

Quistis frowned. "That's a bad idea. Fighting here could destroy part of this village. Unless it's necessary, I would rather not fight here. If you're going to pick a fight, at least make sure the environment is in your favor first." She then promptly walked into one of the tents. The group blinked.

"Did Raven just get lectured?" asked Hana.

"What does it matter where I fight?" muttered Raven. "The only importing thing is winning…or killing…depends who you fight."

"I think she has a point," said Kaze.

"What do you mean?" asked Sora.

"Well, we could fight in the streets back in that city around the Coliseum, but I'm pretty sure that was just because the buildings were made of stone and pretty strong. If someone accidentally hit a building, it wouldn't do much damage. Here though, the 'buildings' are tents made out of some sort of leather. They'd be pretty much destroyed if they got hit by a stray attack. It's probably why they train away from their homes. You'd probably get in really big trouble if you started a fight here."

The other three stared at Kaze in surprise. "How'd you get that so quickly?" asked Sora. Kaze just shrugged. He wasn't sure. It just sort of flowed out naturally. He decided not to worry about it. It was useful, and maybe it would help Raven calm down a little.

"I still wanna fight that lady." Or not.

"Well, wait until tomorrow and see if we can go to the training grounds with her," said Hana. "I'm sure they spar. See if she'll have a match with you."

That seemed to be enough for Raven. He seemed upset that he couldn't have a fight right then, but he was behaving at least. After interacting with all the villagers for a little while, they sat down for dinner, which was some sort of meat and bread. Pluto seemed to have abandoned them temporarily to play with the village kids. Pocahontas was sitting next to the group and was looking at them curiously. "Why are your eyes yellow?"

That was completely unexpected. Kaze, Sora, and Hana looked at Raven. He just looked around in confusion. "Uh, my eyes are yellow?" That got some sweatdrops and facevaults.

"You forgot? That guy in Twilight Town mentioned it," said Kaze.

"Oh yeah…I forgot about that…We haven't exactly gotten access to mirrors so I haven't seen my reflection."

"What about in Twilight Town?" asked Hana. "There was glass that we saw our reflections in."

"Did any of you actually take a look at your reflection?" asked Raven.

"I look like you but with brown hair and blue eyes," said Sora.

"I have weird blond circle spikes and blue eyes," said Kaze.

"I have short black hair and blue eyes, but it's a different blue from Kaze and Sora," said Hana.

"…Okay, I'm the only guy who didn't get a good look at myself." He tugged down one of his hair spikes to get a better look at it and frowned before letting go and turning to Pocahontas. "I have no idea why they're yellow. Why?"

Pocahontas frowned. "It's just…you resemble the shadow creatures."

"The Heartless?" Raven paused and looked at his odd armor. It was almost completely black and admittedly did look creepy. Add that to the black hair and yellow eyes, and it was easy to see why Pocahontas said that. "Okay…that might explain why people have been avoiding me." He just shrugged. "Probably not a big deal."

"That's not all. You also feel like a Heartless." That was a bit of an awkward silence.

"What do you mean feel?" asked Raven. "Because I don't remember you touching me."

"That's not what I meant. I meant it in a more…spiritual way. They are full of darkness and negative emotions…and so are you."

"I'm not negative!" Kaze and Sora shared a look. Raven had not denied being dark. Then again, with the way Raven was, it wasn't possible to think of him as anything but dark.

Hana frowned. "Wait. You mean like a sort of compressing feeling on your heart and being really nervous even though you don't want to be?"

Pocahontas nodded. "Yes, you felt it too?"

Hana frowned again. Honestly she didn't know. That was just the feeling she got from Raven, but she had squashed the nervousness since she also felt like she needed to be around him, Kaze, and Sora for some reason. "I don't know. That's just what my heart feels when I look at him."

Raven rolled his eyes and sighed. "Gee, thanks a lot Hana."

"What do you feel when you look at me and Kaze?" asked Sora.

"Well, Kaze's warm and comforting. He kind of shines if you squint. Sora, you…" Hana trailed off. That was kind of hard to describe. "You feel kind of blank but…not blank."

"Blank…?" Sora looked sort of disappointed by this. "I don't feel blank…"

"It is a hard sensation to describe," said Pocahontas. Then she smiled at him. "However, you are very kind so I wouldn't worry about it."

"How come you two can 'feel' that stuff though?" asked Kaze.

Pocahontas shrugged. "Kekata says I have a perceptive spirit. Since the shadow creatures came, he has been showing me shamanic practices. He can also see these things. Hana likely has a perceptive spirit as well."

Hana just shrugged. "I guess so." And that was where the conversation stopped for the simple reason that Pluto suddenly decided to pounce on Hana. Why no one knew. He was an unpredictable dog when he wanted to be.

The next day, they confronted Quistis about going training with the others. "Hm…" She looked them over. "I have some reservations about the girl."

"I need to learn to fight too!"

Quistis nodded. "Fair enough. Come on. It doesn't take too long to get there."

Roughly 10 minutes later, they came to a river bank where several targets had been set up. "It looks nice here," said Hana.

"Get your weapons. Or do you not have any?" asked Quistis. They summoned their weapons. "Magic weapons, huh?"

Raven grinned. "Yeah, now let's fight!" Quistis sighed is exasperation.

"If you're so anxious to fight, why don't you fight Sora or Kaze?"

Raven paused and looked between the two above-mentioned boys before turning back to Quistis. "Because I don't want to fight them. I want to fight you."

Quistis gave a long suffering sigh. "I thought I wouldn't have problem students anymore."

Kaze raised an eyebrow. "Students? I thought you were a mercenary."

"I was part of an organization and taught people with potential," explained Quistis

Raven grinned again. "You have to be pretty good if you're put in charge of teaching people."

"Fine, we'll fight! Now will you stop pestering me about it?" Raven's grin got bigger.

"Finally!"

"What about us?" asked Kaze.

"Heartless pop up every 15 minutes or so," said Quistis. "You can fight them when they show up. Between outbreaks, you can practice your forms or go through exercises to increase strength, speed, and endurance. You can ask one of the natives for a spar if you want to."

"Yeah, yeah, can we get started already?" Quistis rolled her eyes at the impatient young man and unrolled her chain whip. The other three in the group decided to move away from them and figure out what to do.

"Well, I do need to work on my fighting," said Hana. "What sort of exercises do you think would help with that?"

"Push-ups!" shouted the two boys. Wow, they said it at the same time. So they did push-ups. They got corrected by one of the men there, but they did do some. For some reason, Kaze and Sora were able to do 50 before getting tired. Hana did 10. Next they did sit-ups. Kaze and Sora did 186. Hana did 48. Then some Heartless showed up and everyone had to put training on hold to get rid of them. Then they did squats. Kaze and Sora got a little competitive here and tried to do more than the other. They tied again at 37. Hana did 12.

"That…That's tiring…" Hana panted a few times and looked up at the two boys. They were somewhat winded, but seemed to have handled it much better than her. "How come you two did so much better than me?"

"Uh…beats me," said Sora.

"Girls are supposed to have less muscle strength than guys," pointed out Kaze. "Maybe that's got something to do with it."

"How am I supposed to keep up with you guys then?" complained Hana.

"Well, you're better than us at magic." This was true so they started working on magic. Sora and Hana hit some of the targets with Fire a couple of times before switching to Blizzard. Hana had figured out how to use the spell, but Sora hadn't so she tried showing him how to do that. Then she and Kaze started trying to figure out how to work Barrier.

While all this had been going on, Raven was enjoying himself in his fight with Quistis. Since she used a whip, it was difficult for him to get in close to her. Fortunately, his body armor kept the whip from causing any damage to him. Quistis had apparently figured out that he was good at close combat, so whenever Raven got close enough to possibly attack her, she'd somehow get far away from him before he could do anything. It usually included wrapping her whip around him and throwing him away or kicking off some part of his body. So Raven decided to try long distance fighting. In other words, he started tossing Fires at her. Now, Raven had been careful to get out of the range of the whip, but he discovered that wasn't all Quistis could do. She shot lasers out of her eyes at him, forcing him to dodge. Given, it wasn't aimed at anything vital, but it would've hurt.

"Laser eyes? ! You have laser eyes? !"

Quistis pushed her glasses up. "I'm capable of using blue magic. That type of magic tends to vary depending on the world the inhabitant is from. In my world, this is one of the most basic blue magic spells."

"If that's basic, what are the more advanced spells like?" Several missiles appeared around Quistis. Raven promptly let out a slew of curses at himself, Quistis, and said missiles before making a run to avoid getting blown up by Quistis's magical missiles. Raven would wonder what sort of spell lets you summon homing missiles for the next few weeks.

After being fairly unsuccessful at dodging the missiles, Raven wandered over to his three friends. "Any of you feel like practicing Cure?" Well, they did so all three used Cure on him. Then Raven took some time to learn Blizzard from Sora since Hana was busy with Kaze. After a few more Heartless attacks, Sora and Raven had gotten Blizzard down, and Raven decided to do some work-outs. Meanwhile, Hana and Kaze had figured out how to use Barrier. While Raven continued with his workout, the other three found some willing sparring partners.

This training continued for a few hours before what sounded like a loud horn was heard several times. All the men instantly stood up straight and looked toward the source of the sound. Hana sneaked over to Quistis.

"What was that?"

"It was a signal that something's happened. Something unexpected…We need to see what happened." So everyone headed back to the village.

When they got to the village, everyone was in a tizzy and crowded around the central building. The group of amnesiacs couldn't get in close to see what was going on. Neither could Quistis though. It was probably because they were outsiders. A few minutes of waiting and then asking what happened answered things. Seems something strange had been seen. Strange clouds on a floating island, like nothing the natives had seen before. Quistis said it was probably a large ship. Some people with pale skin had gotten off and started cutting down trees and digging up the land while some of the Natives watched from the trees, trying to determine if the pale men were friends or foes. Then the pale people had noticed them and started firing at them. One of the natives got hit in the leg. The village was understandably worried about this event. Getting attacked without any provocation is usually a very worrying thing. After they did what they could for the shot man (along with weapons, they'd gotten some good medical supplies, lucky for him), a meeting was called. The decision they came to was unexpected.

"You want me to talk to them?" asked Quistis.

"Yes," said Powhatan. "We do not know why they attacked with no provocation, but it is necessary to find out why and if it is possible to come to a truce. With these shadow creatures attacking, we cannot afford to fight a war."

Quistis raised an eyebrow. "And you want the one with the most in common with them to talk with them. It makes sense since we don't know why they attacked. It might be because you're very different from one another." She nodded. "All right. I'll go. But I'll need someone to show me where they are exactly."

"Until we find out why they are here, everyone is to stay in the village. We do not want anyone else to be injured." There were murmurs of agreement.

Of course, Raven was a bit miffed. He'd been enjoying the training and sparring sessions. "So what do you guys do when you're not training to kill Heartless?"

Pocahontas had started hanging around them again. "We usually do normal work, growing food, hunting, cooking, making clothes and baskets."

"That's it?"

"I personally enjoy exploring the forest. If you don't mind disobeying father, I can show you some of my favorite places."

Kaze blinked. "Shouldn't we listen to your father? He's gotta know what he's talking about."

"Yes, I understand his reasoning, but I don't think they'll try moving inland."

"Why not?"

The shamanic princess shrugged. "I just don't think they will. I'm sure we'll be fine if we go. After all, you're all talented fighters."

"I'd like to see more of the forest," said Sora. Hana frowned.

"It seems a bit irresponsible."

Sora held up his hands in a sort of begging position. "Please? I promise we'll be good." He was unknowingly using the puppy dog eyes, which made Hana start sweating nervously.

"O-okay! I'll go!"

"Yes!"

"I gotta learn how to do that," Raven whispered to Kaze.

"I don't think that will work with you…" Seriously, can you imagine that guy with puppy dog eyes?

After taking the time to grab a few supplies, the group snuck out of the village. Pluto had decided to stay behind and play with the village kids again, but Meeko and Flick decided to go with them.

"Are there other villages around here?" asked Kaze.

"Yes, there are many other tribes," answered Pocahontas. "However, they are all under the control of my father."

"Sounds like a pretty powerful guy," commented Raven.

"Does that make you a princess?" asked Hana.

Pocahontas paused a bit. "Others have used that word to describe me. I don't think of myself as one though."

"Hey, how long have the Heartless been here?" asked Sora. "They don't seem very tough."

"They appeared about a year ago. They claimed several lives before we realized they didn't enter the village. Shortly afterwards, people with pale skin started coming from the sky. They brought strange weapons with them and explained what the monsters were. They said they are not as strong here as in other worlds. After a little while, most of them left. Only Quistis stayed. We do sometimes get visitors, but they don't usually stay very long."

"Uh, does anybody else think it's odd that we haven't run into any Heartless?" asked Kaze. That made everyone realize that they hadn't run into any Heartless since they'd left the village.

"You're right…Did something happen to them?" asked Sora.

"No, they're still around," said Pocahontas. "I'm just avoiding the places that will cause them to appear."

Kaze sweatdropped. "How many times have you come here that you know where they pop up?"

"It's not memorization," explained Pocahontas. "I can detect where they will appear and how close someone has to be for that to happen."

"Oh, it's a shaman thing, right?" said Sora. "How does that work? Can others learn it?"

"I've been able to detect it since they first appeared. It's not that difficult. You just have to focus and search for the darkness the Heartless give off. You can see where they will appear if you focus hard enough. Anyone who is sensitive enough to these energies can do it. Hana is probably capable of it as well."

Hana blinked. "You think I could learn to do that? It could be pretty useful."

"Hey! I like fighting the Heartless!" said Raven. "Don't take away my fun!"

Hana laughed nervously. "I'll remember that."

"Stop eating our food!" shouted Kaze. Meeko kept trying to steal their apples slices. Yeah, only Hana liked them, but they still needed to be frugal.

"We're here!" Pocahontas stepped out of the trees and onto a riverbank with the others following her.

"What's so special about this? It looks normal to me," said Raven.

Pocahontas chuckled. "You're just not looking at it right. Try looking…" She walked over to a cliff. "Over here." The four came over and were treated to a view of the lake below surrounded by trees along with miles of forested land.

"Wow, it's beautiful," breathed Hana.

"Yes, it's one of my favorite places." Pocahontas suddenly turned around and walked a few feet back. Then she turned around, took a running start, and jumped off the cliff.

"Pocahontas!" Everyone ran to the edge of the cliff and looked over in time to see Pocahontas land in the lake with a splash. After a couple of tense moments, Pocahontas surfaced. She looked up and waved at them.

"That looks like fun!" said Sora. Then he ran back and also ran off the cliff with a running start. The three still on the cliff looked at each other before Raven shrugged and just jumped off the cliff. Kaze and Hana gave each other nervous looks. It was now obvious they had all the common sense in their quartet. Still, they needed Pocahontas to get back to the village, and that was the only way they could get to her. They took a deep breath, grabbed each other's hands, and jumped off the cliff.

When Kaze and Hana surfaced, they were immediately splashed by the three already in the water. While they glared, the three splashers laughed. A splashing war immediately erupted between the 5 teenagers.

After a few minutes of playing, they stopped to get a quick breather. "We should be getting back," said Pocahontas. "They'll notice that we're gone before much longer." They quickly swam to the bank and started on their way back to the village.

"That was okay," said Raven. "Maybe I should take up cliff diving."

"I think I saw an otter back there," commented Sora.

Kaze sighed. "You two have no self-preservation instincts."

"Pocahontas, do you think you could teach me how to detect Heartless?" asked Hana. "It would be really useful for us."

"It's not something that can be taught. It can only be learned."

"Wait. That doesn't make any sense," said Kaze. "If you can learn something, doesn't that mean someone can teach it to you?"

"Were you taught how to breathe? Or to feel?" Well, she got him there.

"Don't worry Hana. We can work on it later," said Sora. "Maybe you can work on it tomorrow."

They got back to the village without incident. No one had noticed they were gone, thankfully. They were all talking about what could possibly happen if the men on the ship rejected any attempts at peace. While they were waiting for news, Pocahontas was showing them a few things about their culture.

"How long does it take to grind corn," muttered Raven. They were all grinding corn. They weren't sure how she'd talked them into that.

"It doesn't take as long once you get better at it."

"Do you usually do things like this?" asked Hana.

"Yes, we only had to deal with the shadow creatures recently. Before then, most of our time was spent growing food, making food, making clothes, hunting, nothing special. We don't hunt as much now because of the monsters, but we still need food."

"Quistis is back!" There was some excited talk as everyone started walking to the center of the village. It died down when the saw the furious look on Quistis's face.

"It did not go well?" asked Powhatan.

"They refused to listen to me just because I'm a woman!"

The chief frowned. "They would not even hear you out?"

"When I tried to explain things to them, they said 'A woman such as yourself should not lecture your betters.'"

"Then perhaps a male? One with the same color skin as them?" There was a silence as everyone slowly turned to look at the three boys in the group. Kaze shifted nervously.

"Uh, guys…"

"Sure, we'll talk to them for you," said Sora.

"Sora!"

**End chapter**

I like cliffhangers, they make people want to keep reading.

And here we have the group in the Chesapeake. That is the real name of the area. That's what happens when you write about the Pocahontas movie while taking an American History course.

Yes, Quistis is there. I thought it might be awkward for them to interact with the Native Americans, so I put Quistis in there.

**Heartless Files**

Injuns-Heartless roughly the size of Soldiers. They have buckskin loincloths, leggings, and moccasins along with very colorful headdresses. They carry either tomahawks or bows and arrows. The strategy for beating them differs depending on which weapon they use.


	8. Failed Negotiations

Sorry it took so long to get the next chapter out. I had some writer's block for a while on both my stories. I'm still kind of stuck on Sora the Maelstrom, so it may be a while longer before that one is updated.

Then again, this story seems to be more popular than Sora the Maelstrom. Maybe people prefer a visit to a world taking several short chapters instead of one long one?

Anyway, I still don't own anything except for some of the original plot ideas I came up with for this.

**Chapter Start!**

"I can't believe you agreed to do this," muttered Raven.

Sora pushed away a low hanging branch. "Come on, we can't just leave them to deal with this on their own."

"You didn't have to come Raven," said Quistis. "You could have stayed with Hana in the village."

"Someone's gotta keep you guys out of trouble," said Raven. Kaze snorted.

"That's rich coming from you." At that moment, several Heartless popped up. The four warriors quickly took care of them. "I bet you just came so you could fight more Heartless."

"Well, I got to do something!" Raven growled. "I feel so irritated!"

Sora laughed nervously. "Guess I should think things through a bit more."

"Ya think?" Quistis sighed. They were really expecting these three to help fix things? She checked her whip to make sure she'd be able to pull it out quickly if necessary. She had a feeling she was going to need it.

"About how much longer will it take to get there?" asked Kaze. "I'm starting to get nervous now too."

"It's around a mile away from the village," mused Quistis. "We've been walking for around 10 minutes. It should take another 10 minutes as long as we don't run into any scouts."

"What are they like?" asked Sora. This seemed to be the wrong thing to say as Quistis immediately got a furious look on her face.

"They're insufferable! Unless you're exactly like them, they won't listen to you! They'll either think you're an idiot or a savage! They're the idiots though! Instead of building a shelter when they landed, they started digging for gold! And there's no evidence to suggest that this area has gold. Even if there was, it couldn't be found on the beach unless it was from a shipwreck!"

The three boys quickly gave Quistis some distance as she continued her rant. Raven rolled his eyes. "Nice going Sora. Now, we'll probably have to listen to this the rest of the way there!"

"How was I supposed to know she'd do that? I mean, I know she didn't exactly like them, but I didn't think she'd do this! I just wanted to know what they looked like and what they were interested in!"

"Sounds like they're interested in gold," said Kaze.

"Is there even any gold around here?" asked Raven. "No one back at the village was wearing any, not even the chief or Pocahontas, and they're practically royalty. The fanciest jewelry I saw was that necklace Pocahontas was wearing, and I think it was made out of rocks."

"What are you three doing back there?" Seems Quistis noticed they'd fallen behind.

"Nothing, just guy talk." Quistis narrowed her eyes at Raven's comment and opened her mouth to comment on this, but was cut off by Kaze.

"We weren't talking about anything! We were just thinking about how these people look compared to the villagers!" It was pretty close to the truth, and Quistis decided this was good enough to let it go. Kaze gave Raven a look. "Will you be careful! She's still angry about what they said to her!"

"Fine, fine…"

"Hey, Quistis, are we almost there?" asked Sora.

"Yeah, you should be able to see the camp within a few feet." Quistis paused for a moment. "I better stay here. No telling what I'll do if I have to see them again…"

"I say Sora talks to them," said Raven.

"I second that!" agreed Kaze.

"Hey! Why do I have to do the talking?"

"Because you were the one to volunteer us!" said Raven. Sora laughed nervously. He couldn't argue with that. Kaze rolled his eyes at the two.

"Maybe next time you'll think about volunteering us for something before asking us about it." His expression softened somewhat. "But you're a pretty friendly person. If anyone can get along with these guys, it's you."

"…You really think so?" Kaze gave him an encouraging smile and nodded. "Okay, here goes nothing then." Sora took a deep breath and started walking in the direction Quistis had been leading them in with the other two boys behind him.

After a few more feet, they could see the camp of the foreigners. Several men were digging deep holes in the ground. A few were cutting down trees and using them to start building what looked like a wall around some tents that looked pretty simple for the most part. The men were wearing simple pants and shirts for the most part. A few had vests. There were some guns around the place, but they weren't close enough for the men to get to them immediately. Sora took another deep breath.

"Hey!" Well, it got the closest people's attention. "Hi! The natives asked us to talk to you guys."

"Bit young for that, aren't you?"

Sora laughed nervously. It was true that most of these men were noticeably older than him. "Yeah, but it didn't seem like there was anyone else there you guys were willing to listen to. We figured we'd give it a try. We're not completely sure what's going on though. We know someone got shot, but could you tell us how that happened?"

It didn't seem like the men were taking them completely seriously. They were muttering among themselves and chuckling a bit. One decided to answer Sora's question. "We caught the savages spying on us. They must have been planning to ambush us!"

Sora frowned. "Savages?" What was savage about them? They seemed nice to him. "I don't think they're savage, and I don't think they were going to ambush you."

"They have enough problems with the Heartless giving them problems," said Kaze. It's really doubtful that they'd try attacking someone else right now. It would strain their resources even more."

"The what?"

"Oh right. You guys just got here so you wouldn't know about them," said Sora. "They're these little black things with glowing yellow eyes that run around attacking people. The natives have been busy dealing with them. That's why they aren't interested in ambushing you."

There was some muttering among the men. None of it was good. It was mostly disbelief and wondering what was wrong with him.

"How long you been here?"

"Uh, not too long. A little over a day."

"And the savages already have you believing in monsters?"

Sora bristled. "They're not savages! And the monsters are real! I've seen them!"

"You guys are a bunch of idiots." Sora and Kaze tensed up and slowly turned to look at Raven. He had a 'You have angered me and now you must pay' look on his face. "You decide to dig as soon as you land instead of building some sort of shelter even though you're afraid of being attacked. And you're digging for gold. Do you know why gold is valuable?"

"It looks nice?"

"Because it's rare. You can't just find it anywhere, especially on a beach. The only way you'd find it here is if it washed up from a shipwreck or something."

"But maybe the savages found it first!"

"Have any of you actually bothered to look in the forest or make contact with the natives?"

"Smith left a while ago."

"Did you bother to get a good look at the natives that were here earlier? If you had, you would have seen that they wear animal skins. They spend most of their time gathering food and making items for daily life. They don't care about gold. It's useless to them."

"They must be pretending that they don't use any then!"

Raven twitched at that statement. "That's it. I'm gonna have to beat your idiocy out of you."

Then he held up a hand and fired a chunk of ice at the nearest person. Sora tackled this person to the ground, which kept him from being pelted by the ice. The men started going for the guns. Kaze tried to grab Raven, but the darker boy dodged him. Meanwhile, the English men had grabbed the guns and pointed them at Raven. Sora saw this and made a run for them, summoning his Keyblade and slicing apart some of the guns. This caused the men to aim at him instead. Kaze and Raven saw this and ran over, summoning their Keyblades. Kaze quickly cast Barrier on all three of them before knocking some of the men away from Sora. Raven just cut through anything near Sora, including guns and flesh. As the men let out shouts of pain, the three boys jumped together back to back.

"Nice going Raven!" Kaze's statement was dripping with sarcasm. "You made things worse!"

Raven snorted. "I just found out I can't stand idiots. So sue me."

"We got bigger problems!" said Sora. Several men still had guns, although they seemed pretty nervous. The other men were backing away from the three boys.

Raven tossed a Fire at a gun. The man holding it dropped it as the wooden part caught on fire and it discharged, hitting another man in the foot. "We can set the guns on fire."

"I don't want to get shot in the foot," said Sora.

"Point taken."

"What is going on out there?" Well, they didn't recognize that voice. A larger man came out of the tent. He was wearing a purple suit and hat and had black hair with a couple of bows.

"Witches sir!"

Kaze blinked. "But we're guys…"

The larger man frowned. "Witches? Here? Perhaps this is why we can't find any gold."

"Wait!" Sora dismissed his Keyblade and held up his hands to show he had no other weapons. "We're not witches! We just come from a place with combat techniques that allow us to manipulate certain elements!" Kaze and Raven gave him a surprised look. Sora was completely making that up. "Besides, we just got here! There wouldn't be enough time for us to hide anything like gold!"

The man gave them a suspicious look. "And where have you been staying?"

"With the natives," said Sora. Then it occurred to him that wouldn't hold a lot of merit with these men. "They're not savage at all! They have a government and everything!"

The man snorted. "Obviously, you have been with the savages long enough to develop sympathies for them." He gestured to one of the men. "Arrest them." None of the men made to move. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

"Some of them are hurt," pointed out Kaze. "I don't think more fighting will help them."

"Are you in charge of these guys?" asked Raven.

"That's correct. I am Governor Radcliffe, and by order of the king, I am to colonize this land in the name of England."

Raven snorted. "Looks like I owe you guys an apology." This got confused looks from the men still pointing guns at him. Radcliffe seemed pleased by the apology. "With a stupid gaytard like this it's no wonder you ended up doing all the wrong things. I'm surprised you didn't get yourselves killed on the way here with such a single-minded, idiotic blowhard in charge of you and your lives!"

And now Radcliffe looked furious and the other two amnesiacs were giving Raven an exasperated look. Was it too much to ask that he behaved? "Shoot them!"

Then a whip came out of nowhere, wrapped around a gun, and pulled it out of the man's grip while making him lose his balance. Quistis tossed the gun off to the side. "Run for it!" The boys listened to her and made a break for the woods behind Quistis. There were some gunshots heard, but they either missed or were slowed down by the shields enough that they could be deflected without much of a problem. Once they reached the safety of the trees and were sure they weren't being chased, Quistis rounded on them. "What happened? ! I heard gunshots, and when I came to see what was going on, you were surrounded by men with guns! I'm not completely sure you didn't deserve that with the state of the other men!"

"That was Raven's fault!" insisted Kaze.

"What? They were being so stupid! I bet you wanted to hit them! I know Quistis wanted to hit them!"

"Stop! Just stop!" Quistis took a deep breath and turned to Sora. "What happened?"

Sora briefly wondered why she was asking him. "I told them we were sent by the natives, and we tried to explain that the Heartless were keeping them too busy to want to try and attack them and that there was no gold. They didn't believe us about the Heartless and figured that the natives just told us about them and that we were gullible. They didn't believe us about the gold. Then Raven called them idiots and pointed out a bunch of flaws in their logic before trying to hit one guy with a Blizzard. Then the guys ran for their guns, and we were cutting through the guns, and Raven was cutting through their arms too, and we got surrounded, and they were angry. Then this guy, Governor Radcliffe, showed up, and we got accused of being witches. Then he asked if we were responsible for hiding the gold. Then Raven apologized to the guys and called Radcliffe a gay idiot-"

"Why else would he have bows in his hair?"

"And he ordered the guys to shoot us, and then you showed up."

Quistis gave Raven a horrified look. "You attacked them?"

He shrugged. "They were being idiots, and I just figured out I can't stand idiots."

"If being an idiot was a crime, you'd be just as guilty as them!"

Raven blinked and gave her a confused look. "Huh?"

"You were there as representatives of the tribe. That means your attack could be seen as the tribe attacking the colonizers, which can be viewed as an act of war!"

"Oh." Raven at least had the grace to look sheepish. "My bad…"

"Wait." Sora could understand where Quistis was coming from, but he still felt the need to defend Raven. "They didn't take us seriously because of our age. Maybe they won't consider it an act of war? Besides, they shot someone before we even came here, so wouldn't they have started it?"

Quistis sighed. "I wish it was that simple. They can claim it was self-defense since the men observing the settlers did have weapons. Raven attacked without being provoked, which means you can't use that excuse."

"You mean we made things worse for them?" Quistis nodded. Sora's head dropped in disappointment. "Great…I really hoped I could help too…"

"Let's just go back. We'll need to inform Powhatan that things didn't go well this time either."

They weren't looking forward to that.

"The talk went that badly?" asked Powhatan.

"Yes," confirmed Quistis. "They refused to listen to them and a fight broke out. Several of the opposing members have been injured to the extent that I doubt they'll be able to fight any time soon."

"And who was the first to attack?"

Quistis sighed. "Raven. Apparently he was annoyed by their flawed logic."

"I see…" Powhatan turned to the four off-worlders with a noticeably cold look on his face. "Then I must ask you to leave immediately."

They all winced. "What? Why?"

"Due to the shadow creatures, we are in no position to fight a war with anyone, no matter how short it would be. Your attack could be seen as an act of war, and so we can't afford to be considered allies."

"But they shot one of you!" argued Raven. "Shouldn't a counterattack be more appreciated?"

"Perhaps if the circumstances were normal, but they are far from normal. Instead, it is likely that such actions will come back to haunt us. To prevent this, we must cut all ties that we have with the party that made the attack in the first place."

"Why you-" Sora and Kaze quickly grabbed Raven before he could do anything. "Hey, what are you doing?"

Kaze gave him a look. "We didn't come here to cause trouble!"

"We didn't come looking for it either," added Sora. He sighed and turned to Powhatan. "We'll leave, but we aren't familiar with the area so could we have a guide?"

The two stared at one another for a moment before the chief nodded. "That is agreeable, but only if there is one willing to lead you. I will not force any out of the village with the shadow creatures about."

Pocahontas stepped forward. "Father, allow me to do so."

"Daughter…" Powhatan nodded. "Very well. I know you will be able to avoid them if you should choose to."

"Thank you father…" Pocahontas turned to the offworlders. "If you'll give me a moment to gather my things, we can leave immediately."

Hana nodded. "Yeah, that'd probably be for the best…"

Shortly afterwards, they were walking through the woods towards the pick-up point they'd arrived at. Meeko was following them in hopes of a hand out, but had been disappointed so far. "Has anyone thought about how we're going to afford to leave this world?" questioned Raven.

Sora laughed nervously. "I wasn't really thinking that far ahead. I was just thinking that we'd caused enough trouble and should leave."

Pocahontas frowned and turned to them. "What do you mean? Is there a reason you wouldn't be able to leave this world at this time?"

"Yeah, we don't have the munny we need to get a ride out of here," explained Hana.

"What's munny?"

"Erm…" How to explain this?

"I got something," said Kaze. "Say you have some fish and you want to trade it for some corn. You'd just exchange the two, but you wouldn't be able to do that if the person with the corn doesn't want any fish. Then they'll refuse the trade. Munny is sort of a middleman. You give the fish to someone for munny. Then you give the munny to a person for the corn. Then they can use the munny to get something they want. Does that make sense?"

"Somewhat," said Pocahontas. "I've never known anyone to refuse sharing food though."

"Well, it's mostly used in large cities and towns and things like that," commented Kaze. "And it's still got some flaws like inflation and stuff, but it's too complicated for me to completely understand or try to explain."

"But you need this munny to leave?" asked Pocahontas. They nodded. "How many do you need?"

"900." Raven turned to Sora with a scowl. "And do you know how much we have?"

Sora grinned nervously. "Um, not enough?"

"87! We need over 800 munny to leave!" Then Raven glanced at Pluto. "Less if we leave him here." Pluto made an upset sound at this.

"Where do you get this munny?" asked Pocahontas.

"Heartless drop them when you kill them," said Hana. She pulled out a munny from her pouch to show it to the princess. "This is what they look like."

"Oh! That's what you were talking about? I have some you can have if it will help." Pocahontas pulled out a small leather pouch.

"You sure?" asked Sora.

"As you said before, the shadow creatures drop them when you beat them. I can get some more later if I want to. And we don't use it the same way you do. We mainly use it as decoration by carving it into beads. We also use clay and bone, but this reflects light differently."

Raven shrugged. "Well, I'm not too proud to beg." He quickly grabbed the bag from Pocahontas. "Thanks Princess," he said with a grin.

Pocahontas smiled back. "You're welcome."

Raven quickly counted it up. "There's 46…That's 133…"

"We still need 667 munny," said Hana. The group sighed.

"Guess, we better start looking for Heartless," muttered Sora. "This is gonna take a while."

"Then Hana should learn how to detect them," said Pocahontas. That got him some surprised looks.

"I thought it couldn't be taught," said Kaze.

"It can't, but if I tell you where, they are, Hana should be able to learn how to do so rather quickly. Then you will be able to find them when you need to."

Hana got a determined look on her face. "Then I'll learn how to do it. Even if I can't fight as well as the others, at least I'll be useful for something!"

"Aren't you worried about how your dad will react though?" asked Sora. "He only wanted you to take us to the pickup point for the gummi ship."

"I suppose he will be somewhat angry." Pocahontas sighed. "Still, I don't want to leave you stranded out here. I don't mind getting in trouble if it will help you."

"That's not necessary," insisted Kaze.

"Yes it is! We don't have enough food to last more than a few days!"

Raven had a very good point so Pocahontas pointed at a seemingly random spot. "There are five there. Look. Do you see anything? Feel anything?"

Hana frowned. "Well, now that you mention it, a little…"

"Get close enough, and they will appear."

They walked over to the spot, and five Heartless appeared and attacked. The training with Quistis and the men must have paid off, because they were able to take care of the Heartless more quickly than last time.

They repeated this for a while. Pocahontas would point out a spot, ask Hana if she could feel it, and then they'd fight. Pluto usually would stay back. If a Heartless got too close, he'd start barking, and one of the others would come and get rid of the Heartless. Once, Pluto had jumped one and bitten it, but he wasn't built for fighting.

"Now, where do you think we'll find some more of them?" asked Pocahontas.

"Me?" Hana glanced around. "Uh, I guess over there?" She pointed at a spot a few feet away. They walked over to it, and nothing happened. "I guess not…"

"Did you feel anything?" asked Pocahontas.

"Well, it seemed creepy…" It was shaded and the plants looked a bit withered.

"That doesn't mean it's wrong. It is dark because the plants are blocking the light. The plants are withered because they are sick or dying. It's not because of the shadow creatures. They don't affect how a spot looks in any way."

"So, she can't rely on what she sees?" asked Sora.

"Pretty much."

"Maybe I should try closing my eyes then," mused Hana. She closed her eyes and tried to see if she could feel any spots that felt wrong or dangerous. However, the forest was surprisingly noisy when you were trying to focus on one thing. "It's noisy…"

"No more than usual."

"There's usually some kind of background noise," muttered Raven. "Not like you can do anything about it."

Okay, Raven had a point there. Hana tried to block out the noise and focus on feeling the Heartless. She knew what they felt like…Could she find them though? She didn't feel anything that felt like a Heartless. Maybe…they were hiding? It would make sense. Hana never noticed them until they showed up. So, that meant she'd have to explore, only mentally.

Could you do that?

Well, she'd have to try. She wasn't exactly sure how to go about doing this though. Maybe projecting herself, like astral projection? She tried to make her mind go forward a bit.

"I'm bored," complained Raven.

And it snapped back. Hana made an annoyed noise and tried doing it in another direction. A particularly loud squawk made her snap back again. This was going to take a while.

Roughly 10 minutes later, Hana thought she caught sight of something. She opened her eyes and promptly pointed at the spot. "There?"

Pocahontas nodded. "Correct."

Raven let out a sigh of relief from where he was carving drawings into the ground with a bone dagger he'd gotten from somewhere. "Finally!"

Sora got out of his handstand. "Let's fight them!" Seems he was bored too. The two look-a-likes ran over to the spot where several of Injuns and Shadows appeared.

After a couple of minutes, the skirmish was over and they now needed to find more Heartless. Pocahontas found the next batch within a moment. After that batch was defeated, it was Hana's turn again. This pattern continued for a few hours with a brief lunch break.

Eventually, Hana decided she was getting tired and asked for a break. She was getting a bit shaky and sweaty. Everyone decided it would be a good idea to stop for a while.

"I think our clothes are getting kind of dirty," mused Sora. They all had some dirt and sweat on their clothes. He sniffed his clothes and made a face. "Kind of smelly too…"

Kaze copied Sora and also made a face. "Is there somewhere we can wash up?"

Pocahontas thought a bit as she took a look around to orient herself. "There is somewhere close by. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to get there."

It took more than a few minutes since Pocahontas would make seemingly pointless turns to avoid Heartless. The place she was talking about was a river with some stepping stones and a wide waterfall. That was what they'd expected more or less. What they hadn't expected was a man in armor getting a drink from the river's edge. Everyone quickly hid behind the trees. Except for Pluto. He was sort of jerked out of the man's line of sight by Sora. Pocahontas peeked out from behind her tree before jerking back. "Do you recognize him?"

The boys snuck a quick peek. "I don't remember him," said Raven.

"Neither do I," said Sora. "I don't think he was at the camp when we went there."

"Didn't they say one guy was gone?" pointed out Kaze.

"Oh yeah…"

"Do we need to worry about him?" asked Hana. "I don't think I'll be any use in a fight right now."

"That depends on if he's been back to his camp and found out about what happened," said Raven.

Pocahontas peeked out from behind the tree. "He's gone."

The group came out from behind the trees. There was no sign of the man, except for some footsteps near the river. "Guess he didn't notice us," commented Kaze. Then Pluto ran barking into the river. Sora ran after him. It seemed Pluto just wanted to play around though as he just started running around while Sora chased him laughing. Kaze and Hana smiled and ran in as well. Raven decided to settle for washing his face a bit and drinking some. Pocahontas jumped across a couple of the stones to the middle of the river to watch the three playing with Pluto. Raven raised an eyebrow.

"You're not jumping in either?"

Pocahontas chuckled. "Buckskin shrinks when it gets wet. If I wanted to join in, I'd have to take off my clothes, and most of the people from your culture seem uncomfortable with the idea."

"I'm not bothered by it." Raven wasn't sure why that was. He knew that it was not socially acceptable to go around naked even if someone else wasn't around. He just didn't seem to care or something. He chalked it up to an upbringing he didn't remember. "How long until we get to the pickup point?"

"If we don't stop. We should get there within the hour. The only reason it's taking so long is because we've been trying to have Hana learn how to detect Heartless."

"Yeah…That's gonna take a while. Guess we'll work on that while we're getting munny." Raven stood up with a grunt. "Hey, can you think of any-"

Whatever, Raven was going to say was caught off as the man from earlier suddenly jumped out from the waterfall, and landed on a rock with a lit rifle pointed at Pocahontas.

**Chapter End**

And that's the end of that. I've had writer's block for a few weeks, so I decided I'd post this as soon as I got to a good stopping point. What better place than a cliffhanger?

Raven is the worst person to send for a peace delegation, especially if the people you want to talk to have some strongly held misconceptions.

Also, Raven's opinion is not a reflection of my own.

Hana still isn't much of a fighter, but she can learn some other skills that should make up for it.

Three guesses who the guy at the river was, and the first two don't count.


	9. Things get worse

This chapter might be a bit shorter than you'd like, but I was having a bit of writer's block that I had trouble getting past. I shouldn't have trouble writing the next chapter.

I still don't own anything except for this story.

**Chapter Start!**

There was a long tense moment of silence where everyone stared at the man with the gun and Pocahontas. Pocahontas for her part, turned and stared him down with a semi-neutral look on her face. How many people do you know who can do that?

After the tense moment, the man looked up in surprise. Then he slowly lowered his gun. The others took advantage of this to make a break for it. Well, Raven would have stayed to fight, but Kaze grabbed him to prevent any more international incidents.

"Hey let go!"

"Not this time!"

"Wait!"

Pocahontas made a seemingly pointless curve around a spot. The others followed her example to avoid having to deal with Heartless while making a run for it. The man didn't know about this, and some Heartless popped up. These weren't Injuns or Shadows. These were a new kind they didn't recognize. They had poofy purple pants with armor and a helmet that looked like the one the guy chasing after them was wearing. Said guy unslung his rifle and shot one of the Heartlesses in the head. It seemed to be a one-shot rifle though because he had to stop to reload it while dodging gunshots from the Heartless.

Sora and Hana paused for a split second, feeling a bit sorry for the man. This was enough for Pluto to break away from them and run towards the Heartless.

"Pluto!" Sora ran towards the dog. Raven cursed and turned to go after Sora. Hana turned to follow after them. Kaze groaned.

"Is this gonna happen everytime? !" Still, he turned back to make sure that nothing happened to his fellow amnesiacs. Pocahontas didn't want to leave them alone, so she pivoted and ran to the fight.

These Heartless were more difficult to deal with then the other types they'd run into for two reasons. First, they were using guns that didn't need to be reloaded. Bullets are extremely difficult to dodge, especially at close range. The most you could do was pay attention to when they were going to fire and dodge before they pulled the trigger, but late enough that they couldn't re-aim. It wasn't as bad as it could be though because Hana put Barriers around everyone and made sure to keep them up. It slowed bullets enough that they could be dodged. The second reason they were difficult to fight was because they had armor.

Fortunately, the armor was only a problem if you didn't aim correctly. As long as you could hit them in the head, that was enough. Keyblades were easily strong enough to kill them. The spear Pocahontas was slightly more difficult since she couldn't just swing it. She had to stab after getting close enough. The man was having the most difficult time. If his rifle wasn't single shot, he could simply shoot all of them as needed. As it was, he'd resorted to using it as a club.

After a few minutes, they finally had managed to kill all the Heartless. The man poked at the barrier a couple of times before it dissolved. "Huh…" Then he noticed that everyone was in a position to attack him. His eyes went over the kids. "You're not savages…"

"Why does everyone keep calling them that? !" shouted Sora.

"That's what the other people discovered here are like." He looked Pocahontas over at this. "You don't look like them though."

Everyone was understandably confused by this, especially Pocahontas. "What do you mean?"

The man shrugged. "Different cultures I guess. You don't sacrifice people by ripping out their still beating hearts, do you?"

"What? ! No!" Pocahontas's look of horror was genuine.

"Is that what the other people here do?" asked Kaze, shocked.

The man shrugged. "It's what the Spanish reported when they came here." Well, that explained why everyone kept tossing around the word savage.

"We would never do something so barbaric!" insisted Pocahontas. "We respect the spirits and dedicate time to worship as necessary, but we never kill in their name!"

"Okay, okay, you don't do sacrifices! I get it! But what's with the kids? I thought we were the first to reach this part of the New World. Are you from another country? Or maybe another expedition?"

"We're part of another expedition," said Hana, dismissing her weapon. "There's another woman from the same place in their village. She's teaching them how to use guns and fight in different styles so that they can fight the Heartless."

He raised an eyebrow. "The what?"

"Those black things that were just here," explained Kaze.

"So that's what they were…"

"They looked different this time though. I wonder why," wondered Kaze.

"You're pretty friendly considering what happened at your camp," commented Sora.

The man gave them a suspicious look. "What do you mean?"

"…You haven't been back to your camp in the past few hours have you?" mumbled Raven. "Long story short, Pocahontas's dad asked us to try talking to your buddies so they wouldn't shoot anyone. They were being stupid, I lost my temper, and now several of them have injuries preventing them from fighting, digging, or working in general. Oh, and several guns were destroyed as well."

"…You only have…swords though. How would you injure men with guns with those?"

"Oh, it's actually easy," said Sora. "They have to reload after every shot. As long as you can get in close before they fire or reload, it doesn't matter if they have a gun." The man seemed to concede to this point.

"Then I better go back. They might need some help." He paused. "Except more of those things will show up if I do that, and they're not like normal people. Shooting them in the head doesn't slow them down." It was true. The Heartless didn't seem to have brains like a normal creature.

"Well, maybe Pocahontas can take you there," suggested Hana.

"I don't know where his camp is," said Pocahontas.

"Maybe we could take you there," suggested Sora.

Kaze twitched. "Sora…"

"Oh, right sorry."

"I don't mind going," said Hana. "We could fight Heartless on the way there and get munny."

"Get what?" The mystery man's the only one that doesn't know what munny is.

"Those black things are Heartless. Those shiny things they drop are munny. They're used as currency in some places," explained Raven.

"Ah."

"We still need to get off this world though," said Kaze. "Powhatan was pretty upset at us."

"Who?"

"My father," explained Pocahontas. "He is the chief of our tribe and several others."

"Oh, so he's similar to a king then…"

"The gummi ship won't be back until at least tomorrow," pointed out Raven. "And Hana has a point. We'll get munny that we can use to leave."

Kaze sighed. "Fine…I hope those guys don't try to attack us when they see us though."

"Great! So what's your name?" asked Sora.

"John Smith. What did you mean by 'Get off this world?'"

So that resulted in a brief explanation of inter world travel, world barriers, Heartless, magic, gummi ships, munny, and miscellaneous things.

"So, there are other worlds out there, like this one, but with different cultures and beliefs?"

"Right."

"And they're usually kept apart, but because of the Heartless the inhabitants can now travel to other worlds using special ships?"

"Right."

"In addition to weakening barriers, Heartless can steal hearts from people and worlds, which will kill them."

"Right."

"So worlds are forming treaties and allying to destroy the Heartless."

"Right."

"Including this world. And you guys gave the natives more modern weapons, like guns."

"Well, we didn't, but someone did."

"And there's a woman teaching them how to use them?"

"Why does everyone find that so strange?"

"I can't think of any culture where women fight regularly." John shrugged. "Then again, I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures."

Raven snickered. "Quistis would love that. When she went to talk to your buddies, they wouldn't listen to her because she was a woman."

"There's some religious reason for that." John glanced at Pocahontas and Hana. They were still trying to predict where Heartless were going to appear. "What are they doing?"

"Pocahontas is trying to show Hana how to detect Heartless before they appear," explained Kaze. "Some people who are sensitive enough can do that apparently."

"More magic?"

"I dunno. No one mentioned it before we got here…" said Sora. "And I don't think they're even using magic…"

"Who cares what it is?" said Raven. "It's useful."

At that point, Pocahontas suddenly froze. Hana stopped walking too and looked curiously in front of them before turning around. "I think we need to find another way around."

"How come?" asked Kaze.

"I'm getting a really bad feeling here. I think there's a lot of Heartless." Hana glanced nervously at Pocahontas. "Right?"

"Yes, it goes on as far as I can see." Pocahontas promptly turned and started walking in another direction. "It would be best if we found another route."

"But this is the quickest route back to the camp," protested John.

"Maybe, but with this many shadow creatures, we would probably die before we reached your camp."

"I'm with Pocahontas," said Kaze. "I think we should find another route."

John sighed. "Well, when you put it that way…"

They promptly spent two hours trying to get around the large patch of Heartless, but no matter how far they went, they couldn't find a spot to cross it. John tested it a couple of times to see if Pocahontas was right, and a large amount of Heartless showed up each time. A couple of them were particularly large Heartless that couldn't be harmed in the front unless you used magic. By the time the sun was setting, they had yet to find a way around, and they were starting to get hungry.

"How far does this thing go?" complained Raven.

"I don't know," said Pocahontas. "I've never seen something like this before. I…I'm worried. I'm scared that something horrible has happened."

"Anyone got any ideas to get through it?" asked Sora.

"Fight our way through," suggested Raven.

"No." Funnily enough, everyone said that at the same time, even John. Everyone looked at him in surprise.

"I'm almost out of bullets," he explained.

"We need to find a place to spend the night," said Pocahontas. "The shadow creatures are much more numerous at night, and the locations they appear in change randomly."

"They never showed up at your village though," pointed out Xion.

"We set up some wards to keep them from entering. There are other places where they are unable to set foot. One is nearby, but I'm not sure we can get there before nightfall."

"It's worth a shot," said John. "And if we can't get there in time, we'll just have to take shifts looking out for 'em after we set up camp."

Pocahontas nodded. "All right, but I'm not sure there's enough room for us to get there in one go."

"Huh?"

"It's in the middle of a lake," she explained. "I have a canoe there, but it's not big enough for all of us."

"That's okay," said Sora. "I know how to swim!"

"Can you swim with wet clothes weighing you down?" asked Pocahontas.

"Oh, good point."

After some navigating, they reached a lake with a large willow tree in the middle of it. Like Pocahontas had said, there was a canoe but it didn't look like it was big enough to hold more than two or three people.

"Is that an island or a tree?"

"It's a tree. Who should I take over first?"

"You should take over the ones who are less able to fight first," said John. "That way if we get any surprises, we won't have to worry as much about casualties."

"Have you done this before?" asked Kaze.

"…Not exactly, but it was close enough."

"So, Hana and Pluto should go first then," said Sora. Pluto was currently lapping up some of the lake water.

Hey, they'd been running around for a while, everyone was thirsty.

After managing to get Pluto into the canoe and getting him to sit still, Pocahontas started off. The four guys (and Meeko) were left on the shore waiting. John slipped Meeko what looked like a biscuit.

"Are you sure you should be giving him your food?" asked Kaze.

"I've been eating hard tack for six months. If I never see it again, it'll be too soon."

Raven made a face. "It took you that long to get over here?"

"Yes, we had to cross a whole ocean, after all."

"Wow, I guess gummi ships are a lot faster," mused Sora.

"It sounds like it if they can travel between worlds," agreed John. "How are they able to do that though?"

"Uh, I'm not sure how they work," admitted Kaze. That was a good question no one could really answer.

"Let's just ask Cid next time we see him," said Raven.

Sora suddenly stood up and started waving. "Hey, Pocahontas!" Seems she was about back.

After a bit of debating, Kaze and Sora were put in the canoe and were ferried across.

"Why'd you bother coming here anyway?" asked Raven.

John smiled. "Adventure. There's nothing like this back home. Sprawling forests, mountains, I'd never seen any like these before the first time I came to this new world."

Raven snorted. "It's on the same world as you. There's nothing new about it."

"It's new to me. It's so different from what I'm familiar with…It might as well be a different world."

Raven raised an eyebrow, but decided to just shrug it off. "Eh, if there's an ocean between you two, I guess that makes sense."

"It's the same reason you four came here."

Raven paused. "Okay, you got me there."

John stood up. "Well, Pocahontas is about back, time for us to go."

They spent the ride over in silence. That might've been a good thing though.

"So how come you can talk?" That sounded like Sora.

"When you get as old as me, you learn a few tricks." They didn't recognize that voice, but it sounded like an old woman.

"Is there someone else here?" asked John.

"Just Grandmother Willow."

Raven gave Pocahontas a disbelieving look. "Your grandmother is here?"

"No."

The odd thing was that when they climbed out, they didn't see any old ladies.

"What happened to the lady who was here?" asked Raven.

"Right here!" The two guys turned around and were shocked to see a face in the bark of the tree. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost!"

Raven's eyes widened. "I-I-"

"She's a talking tree! Is that cool or what?" asked Sora.

"We've been talking with her while we waited for you," added Hana.

"What do you say to a talking tree?" asked John, still staring with wide eyes. Seems this was a definite first for him.

Pocahontas chuckled. "Whatever you want to of course."

"Wait a minute." The gears in Raven's head were turning. "Are you the reason the Heartless can't come here?"

"Oh, no, it's the water. The water in this lake has special properties. Once it leaves the lake though, it loses these properties over a matter of a few hours."

"Is that why you can talk?" asked Sora.

"Who knows? It might be, but maybe I was meant to be able to communicate with humans and would have learned how to anyway."

"Do you think we could use the water to get past all those Heartless?" asked Sora.

"She just said it loses that power when it leaves the lake," pointed out Raven.

"She said it takes a while though," pointed out Sora.

"Oh, I think I might know a way to make it work," said Grandmother Willow, a twinkle in her eye.

**End chapter!**

I think this chapter was a bit shorter than usual, but this seemed like a good point to cut off since from here on there's going to be a lot of fighting.

Fun Fact: Willows are actually one of the few tree species that are either male or female and only have that respective flower. Most trees have either both male and female flowers or flowers that that have both male and female parts. That means that while most trees could be considered hermaphrodites, willows are always either male or female. Just thought it would be a fun thing to mention since they made a willow tree a nice old lady of sorts.

Due to the Heartless situation, John is thinking about different things than he did in canon, which will alter his relationship with Pocahontas to a certain extent. It may also change history if things continue as they do (Although given what happens to the Native Americans in the long run, that might not be a bad thing.).

**Heartless Files**

Conquister-A Heartless with purple pants that wears a conquistador style helmet, chest armor, and shoes. The Heartless emblem is on its chest, and it uses a gun. As you can guess, it's a long range fighter. The most effective way to fight it is with magic. However, it is best to hit it in unarmored parts, as the armor makes spells less effective and physical attacks practically useless.


	10. Savages, Savages Everywhere

Holy cow! Neku Sakuraba is gonna be in 3D! That is so awesome! That is the most epic thing to happen in Kingdom Hearts ever!

Now that that fangirl moment is out of the way…

This is the final Chesapeake chapter. The group will be leaving after this.

I still don't own anything except some of the ideas and some Keyblades.

**Chapter Start**

"Are you sure this is going to work?" asked Kaze. The small group was standing in front of the large band full of Heartless. The guys had pulled out their weapons and were prepared for battle. Sora also had Pluto tied to his wrist so that they wouldn't lose him. Pocahontas had her weapon slung across her back. She and Hana were holding several water bottles, a canteen, and a water skin.

"Grandmother Willow is very wise," insisted Pocahontas. "I'm sure she knows what she's talking about."

"I have to admit I'm a bit skeptical about how well this will work too," agreed John. "I don't see how water can help people repel these things."

"We won't know until we try," said Sora.

Raven nodded. "Yeah, we're not going down without a fight."

"We better hurry," said Hana. "We don't know how long this water will work."

With that, they ran into the Heartless territory. As soon as they touched it, several different types of Heartless appeared. There were the Indian and armored Heartless that seemed common to this world, but there were also Shadows, Soldiers, and very large Heartless that couldn't be hurt from the front unless you used magic.

They weren't able to get very far in before they had to stop because of the Heartless. Raven and Sora were usually the ones who had to attack the big Heartless. Kaze was sticking to physical stuff but did use Barrier on everyone when they stopped. John had got his one shot in and then started using his rifle as a bludgeoning weapon. They weren't the important part of this though. Pocahontas and Hana were.

The guys were specifically protecting the two girls. It wasn't because they were being sexist. It was because of what the girls were supposed to be doing. Pocahontas took a small sip of water from one of the bottles. Her eyes briefly flashed white and a burst of white light erupted from her. It didn't extend too far…maybe five or six feet. It didn't hurt the people (or Pluto) but it destroyed all the Heartless that were there, allowing them to run forward for another few yards before Heartless forced them to stop again.

This time Hana took a sip of water. Like Pocahontas, a burst of white light erupted from her and destroyed the Heartless that were surrounding them. It went a bit farther though. It let them run slightly farther before they had to stop.

Now, if this were actually a videogame, you'd have to play for like 10 or 15 minutes to get past this part of the game, and you'd have to protect Pocahontas and Hana the whole time. Since I'm sure you don't want to read 10 to 15 minutes worth of detail on how they're fighting Heartless and protecting the two girls, I'll skip to the end. Nothing really interesting happened during that time anyway.

So, like 13 minutes after starting, they finally got all the way through. They were nearly out of water, they'd run out of magic (again), Pluto was freaking out, everyone was bruised, and John's helmet had gone missing. They'd made it though!

"That…was a bit…much," gasped Raven.

"I can't…believe…you just…said that," gasped Kaze.

The only one who wasn't completely exhausted was John, and he still seemed pretty tired. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he quickly reloaded his gun. "See anything else we should be worried about?"

The two girls looked around a bit. "I think…we're…okay," gasped Hana.

"It does…seem that way," agreed Pocahontas.

"Good," said Sora. "I could use a break."

And then a wall of hexagons surrounded them on all sides. Of course, the hexagons were only visible for a second before turning transparent. There was a very tense silent.

"Is this more magic?" asked John. The quartet and Pocahontas shook their heads. John frowned and tapped the wall. It flashed in the spot, briefly showing parts of the hexagons, but it sounded very solid. "Seems magic to me." Well, he had a point. "You might want to use those medicines you brought with you."

They'd been saving their potions and ethers for an emergency. Since this was shaping up to be one, they listened to John with no complaints and tossed a potion and ether to Pocahontas.

After drinking the potions and ethers (and disconnecting Sora and Pluto), they started looking around to see if they could find a way to get rid of the unexpected obstacle.

"Something is happening to the Heartless," Pocahontas suddenly said.

"Please tell me they're not going to pop up in here," moaned Kaze.

Pocahontas frowned. "I don't know. The area they were in seems to be receding."

"Isn't that good?" asked Hana.

"I can't say. They usually don't move around during the day…"

"What's that?" asked Sora, looking up.

John looked up as well and frowned. "What?"

Sora pointed up at a black dot in the sky. "That!"

John frowned as he finally got a good look at what Sora was talking about. "Good question."

As it got a bit closer, they thought it might be a bird. It had what looked like wings at least. Then it got even closer and they realized it was not a bird. It was bigger than a man, and had wings covered in red skin instead of feathers. Its body was covered in red and purple feathers and the Heartless crest was on its chest. It had purple legs with black talons, and a reddish-black beak. It was heading right for them.

Pocahontas's gasped. "Thunderbird?"

"Move!" John had to pull her out of the way as the large Heartless landed where she'd just been standing and noticeably gouged into the ground. It let out a loud shriek.

"What is that? !" shouted Kaze.

"A big ass Heartless!" Raven shot a Fire at the large Heartless. It hit the Heartless's wing, causing it to focus on Raven. It opened its mouth and an orange orb of energy appeared in it. Raven's eyes widened. "Shit!" He barely managed to dodge the resulting laser, which actually melted the ground.

A bullet suddenly went through the Heartless's head. It shook its head and turned to John who quickly looked at Hana. "Use those shields of yours!"

"Right!" Hana quickly used a Barrier on John. It didn't seem to have much effect of the lasers though. They still went through the shield and John's armor. Given, he still dodged it for the most part. The injury was only a couple of inches long. Hana quickly used a Cure to heal the injury. Unfortunately, this caught the Heartless's attention, and it dove towards her. Hana had to dodge out of the way.

"Hana!" Sora ran over and drove his Keyblade into its side. The Heartless let out a loud shriek and knocked Sora away. He hit the invisible wall with a loud shout.

"Sora!" The Heartless lifted its head.

"Oh no you don't!" Raven started shooting Fires and Blizzards at the back of the Heartless's head, but it was managing to ignore them. Kaze's eyes widened as he cast a Barrier on Sora. John quickly raised his reloaded gun and fired. Pocahontas threw her spear at it. None of it affected the Heartless.

Then a bright blast of light hit it. This stopped it in its tracks and actually knocked it to the side. It also caused the wall to visibly flicker and start falling apart. The Heartless took off with a cry and started flying towards the direction of the Pocahontas's village and John's camp. Everyone looked toward where the light came from and saw Hana swaying with an empty water bottle in her hand.

"You drank the rest of the water? !" shouted Pocahontas.

John (He was closest), ran over and caught Hana as she fainted. "What possessed her to drink to rest of the water? ! Didn't she remember what that tree said would happen? !"

Pocahontas looked over at Sora, who was conscious and sitting up but was still holding his head. "She must have thought it was the only thing that would keep Sora from coming to harm."

*Flashback*

"Animals can drink this water without any side effects, but people who drink it have strange things happen to them."

"What sort of things?" asked John. "It could be some kind of disease."

Grandmother Willow shook her face. "Not that kind of effect! Like I said before, it has purifying properties. It will remove anything negative. Animals are neutral because they don't actually have morals or beliefs about right and wrong. Humans do though. These negative emotions and memories are expunged from the person. The mildest cases have the person feeling rather confused with a few missing memories, but the worst cases will wipe out a person's entire memory. They become like infants. It's why most people avoid this place. However, there are certain people like Pocahontas and the village shaman who can drink small amounts of this water without suffering these effects, and it will let them have purifying powers for a short amount of time. This power could allow you to get through the Heartless you mentioned before."

"But isn't that dangerous?" asked Kaze. "There's a lot of Heartless. Wouldn't Pocahontas need to drink a lot of the water?"

"As long as the water's power is used up, she should be fine, and the easiest way to use the purifying power is to let it out in one burst, so it would be easy for her to know when she needs to drink some more of the water. However, she would need a few moments to recover before she could do so again."

"So we'll have to fight off the Heartless while Pocahontas is recovering?" asked Sora.

Raven grinned. "I'm okay with that."

Grandmother Willow chuckled. "Not necessarily…"

Pocahontas blinked. "What do you mean? I don't know of a way to recover any faster than that."

"Neither do I. I was talking about that young lady here." The tree looked over at the only other girl present.

Hana blinked and pointed at herself. "You mean me?"

Grandmother Willow nodded. "Yes, you have an unusually pure heart and some power similar to a shaman's. You should be able to use the water as well."

"I don't like the idea of either of them using the water like that if it has such dangerous side effects," said John.

"I've used it several times before," said Pocahontas. "Kekata as well. It's perfectly safe as long as you know what you're doing."

"…Are you serious?"

"What if one of them swallows too much of it?" asked Kaze.

"It should be the same as if a normal person drank too much."

"Well, that won't be a problem for Hana," commented Raven.

John raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I can't remember anything from before a week or so ago," explained Hana. "None of us can."

"…Are you serious?"

"That's not exactly a bad thing," pointed out Grandmother Willow. "You have a lot less to lose if you drink too much of the water."

"She has a point there," commented Sora.

"…How did you four manage to lose your memory at the same time?" asked John in a suspicious tone.

"We're amnesiac! How would we know that?" Raven had a point there.

John sighed. "Fine. Do we have anything that can be used to hold water?"

Sora, Raven, Kaze, and Hana each had a water bottle, John had a canteen, and Pocahontas had a water skin. There wasn't much water left in any of them, but they decided to wait to put the lake water in them until the next day in case they got thirsty. After spending the night with Grandmother Willow, they filled their water containers with the lake water and made their way toward the gathering of Heartless.

*End Flashback*

John sighed as he repositioned Hana on his back. As the tallest person present, everyone had decided that he should carry Hana. Since he had only two bullets left, there wasn't much of an argument there.

Sora was sort of stumbling. Raven had to help him walk somewhat. John thought Sora might have a concussion.

So they were down two people, more if you considered that the two people had to be carried around.

It was a good thing Pocahontas could detect the Heartless and keep Pluto from wandering off or they would be in real trouble. As it was, they needed to get to either the village or the camp as soon as possible to get Sora and Hana looked over.

As if that wasn't bad enough, there was a huge Heartless running around. They had to keep an eye out for that.

"We're almost to the village," said Pocahontas. "They should be able to help."

"Your dad said that we weren't welcome though," said Kaze. "What if he tries to kill us?"

"Given the situation, I'm sure father will be willing to overlook what happened. Come on."

"And what about me?" asked John. That caused her to pause.

"Well, I'm sure once we explain things he'll be willing to let you stay for a little while."

Raven snorted. "Well, we're doomed."

They continued on for another half-hour. Eventually, the village came into view. Pocahontas inhaled sharply. There were scores of Heartless surrounding the village. Yeah, they hadn't gotten in, but it was still very bad, especially for the group. "How?"

"Well, we can't fight them like this," said John. "We'll have to go somewhere else."

"Wait!" Pocahontas held up one of the water bottles. "There's still some water. I think we can get through."

"Are you sure about that?" asked Kaze. "I mean…Look what happened to Hana!"

"I've done this before, and it should only take one time. After that, I won't have to worry about overdosing."

"I say we listen to her," said Raven. "We're practically running on empty."

John sighed. They had a point. "Fine. Can you sip some of the water and wait to swallow it until you're next to them? That oughta help our chances."

"Yes, be ready to run." With that, Pocahontas quickly took in a mouthful of water. Then she ran forward towards the Heartless with the others close behind her. When the Heartless noticed her and jumped at her, she swallowed and let out the burst of light. It killed enough Heartless for them to run into the village without having to worry about getting hurt. As soon as they were safe, they fell into various tired positions.

Several gasps made them look back up. The villagers were all staring at them. Pocahontas straightened. "Something caused the shadow creatures to increase. I needed to bring them back. They need help." The villagers were reluctant to move. "What are you doing? If they don't get help-"

"Excuse me." Quistis pushed through. "You brought them back?"

Pocahontas shrugged. "I couldn't get back alone, and I couldn't leave them to fend for themselves. Can you help Sora? Hana needs help from Kekata."

Quistis came forward and gave John a look. "You're from that camp…"

He nodded, staring at Quistis in confusion. "Yeah, you're not a native…"

"Obviously." Quistis lifted Sora's head and gave his eyes a look. "What happened and how do you feel?"

"I don't know…my head hurts an' everything is fuzzy an' stuff."

"He hit his head didn't he?" The group nodded. "Looks like a concussion, but it's pretty mild. He should take some potions to reduce the swelling and reduce the memory problems."

"Actually, Pluto found a couple of potions somewhere so we gave them to Sora," said Kaze. They weren't really sure how Pluto had pulled that off since Pocahontas had kept a hold on his collar the whole time.

"He'll need more than two. I'll take it from here. If you need anything, come to my hut. I have plenty of potions and ethers." With that she walked off with Sora.

Pocahontas turned to John. "Please follow me to Kekata's wigwam."

"Sure." Those two went off. That left Raven, Kaze, and Pluto all on their own.

"So, what do we do now?" asked Kaze.

Raven shrugged. "I think we're stuck here…I'm gonna take Quistis up on her offer. I could use some potions and ethers."

"Good idea." So they headed over in the direction Quistis had been heading.

After a couple of guesses, they found Quistis and a gagging Sora. His color certainly seemed better. She glanced at the two boys. "Wanted some medicine?"

They. "Yes, please."

Quistis tossed them each a potion and ether. "Try to see if your other buddies will drink some too. Although that guy you were with probably won't need an ether."

The two boys quickly downed the two liquids. They instantly felt better. "So, how are you feeling Sora?" asked Kaze.

"Okay, I can see fine now, but my head hurts and I feel lightheaded…"

"I can't give him anymore potions right now," explained Quistis. "You have to be careful with head injuries."

"How long until he's better?" asked Raven.

"A few more potions and some rest, and all the obvious symptoms will be gone. He'll have some memory problems though so he should keep taking potions on a regular basis."

"What about Cure?" asked Kaze.

"That will help alleviate the symptoms, but the potions are the quickest way to go. Besides, you need to conserve your magic."

Sora smiled. "Hey, don't worry about me. I'll be fine." He stood up and stumbled slightly. "I just need a little rest. That's all. How's Hana doing?"

"Uh, we came here first," explained Kaze. "Most of the villagers seemed uneasy about us."

"Well, you did mess up." Quistis pocketed some potions and ethers before standing. "I'll take you to them."

They were in the large central wigwam. Kekata was shaking what looking like a turtle shell rattle over Hana while chanting something they couldn't understand. Pocahontas was watching on. John was looking over some of the guns. Pluto walked over to Hana and lay down next to her.

"How's Hana?" asked Sora.

Kekata shrugged. "It is not as bad as it could be." Then he went back to chanting.

Quistis handed Pocahontas a potion and ether. "You should drink this."

Pocahontas smiled. "Thank you."

Quistis walked over to John. "You should have some too."

John made a face. "It tastes disgusting."

"It's like medicine. Just drink it. It'll help you recover more quickly."

"Fine." John took the bottle Quistis was offering, downed it, and handed to bottle back to her. "These guns you have are something else. They can fire several times before you need to reload."

Quistis raised an eyebrow. "Oh, this world still uses single shot rifles?"

John gave her a confused look. "Still?"

"Different worlds are at different levels of development," explained Quistis. "Think of these as a sort of future version of what you're used to."

John blinked. After a couple of moments to recover from that shock he turned his attention back to the guns. "Guess that explains your clothing. I thought they seemed really odd." Quistis and the three boys huffed indignantly. "Think I can borrow a few of these?"

Quistis raised an eyebrow. "What for?"

"I'm worried about the men back at the camp. These things are brutal. They'll need all the help they can get to survive."

"You're going there now?" asked Kaze.

John nodded. "Those Heartless are popping up all over the place. They're probably at the camp already."

"And they don't have any sort of defense besides guns," continued Quistis. "And most of those were destroyed when Raven decided he didn't like them."

John raised an eyebrow and gave Raven a look. "Right, I think he mentioned that before." Raven laughed nervously and scratched the back of his head. "Any idea how to get past the Heartless surrounding the village?"

"I imagine you can walk right past them. The trick is to keep from getting killed by them."

"Let us help," said Sora.

Raven and Kaze whipped around to look at him. "What? !"

"Yeah, I mean it's partly our fault that his friends are in bad shape in the first place." At that Raven shifted guiltily. "I figure we can go with him. Plus, we can use magic, so that will help him out."

"What about Hana though?" asked Kaze. "She'll probably panic if we're not around."

Sora winced. "Good point."

"I'm not going anywhere until Hana wakes up," agreed Raven.

"Wait!" Everyone looked over at Pocahontas. "I'll go with you."

Quistis's eyes widened. "No! They don't take women seriously, and they won't listen to the villagers! There's no way they'll accept any help from you!"

"They don't need to accept my help. They just need to receive it."

"That will not be necessary." Everyone looked up as Powhatan entered the wigwam and gave John an accusatory look. "Your people are marching towards our village armed for battle."

John narrowed his eyes. "…How do you know that if no one can leave the village?"

"We have telescopes." John blinked at that unexpected piece of information and looked at Quistis, obviously asking for an explanation.

"We decided to bring everything that might be needed in case of an emergency like this," explained Quistis. "Didn't think we'd have to look out for other people though."

"Shouldn't the Heartless be attacking them?" asked Sora.

"Well, there's an explanation for that, but it's a bad one." Everyone looked at Quistis. "Occasionally, when someone has a large amount of darkness in their heart, the Heartless are attracted to the person but instead of attacking him, they follow him. They seem to follow whoever has the most darkness. These people have more darkness in them than the Heartless. However, in most cases, these people lose their hearts rather quickly."

John frowned. "You're saying one of my men is controlling them?"

"Well, I don't see who else it could be. If it was one of the villagers, the Heartless wouldn't have surrounded the village!"

John sighed. "Fair enough. What's the plan? I realize you don't have experience with this kind of thing, but you must have some idea about what to do."

"You will not be fighting with us," declared Powhatan, shocking everyone besides Quistis.

"What? Why not?"

"Your allegiance is with your pale brethren. If you had been able to reach them in time, you would have joined them in marching against us." Well, John couldn't argue with that. "You will be kept restrained in here until after we are out of danger."

"…Fine. I don't like it, but I can understand the reasoning."

"What about us?" asked Sora. "Can we help?"

Powhatan sighed. "Fortunately, we do not require negotiations in this situation." He wasn't going to forget that incident anytime soon it seemed. "Since we cannot leave the village, we will need long-range fighters. Since you are capable of using magic, you fall in that category."

"And what of me, father?" asked Pocahontas.

"You will stay here with Kekata."

"But father-"

"You have worried me enough." Pocahontas winced at that. "Quistis, you will command our fighters."

Said woman saluted. "Yes sir."

"Your letting a woman lead your troops?" questioned John.

"For your information, I have been trained to fight and lead others since I was three," Quistis said to the explorer. "I have shown myself to be the most capable strategizer since I arrived here."

John didn't even try to hide his surprise. "I see…"

"Now, we need to tie you up."

And that was how John ended up tied to a post while the three boys went to fight with the villagers. Hana had yet to wake up so she obviously wasn't fighting, and Pluto was still next to her.

"I still feel sore from fighting our way here," muttered Kaze. "We hardly even got a break…"

Raven shrugged. "That's war for ya."

Sora frowned. "Can we call this a war? I mean…We're fighting other people now, but we're focusing on Heartless. We probably wouldn't be fighting them if it weren't for the Heartless."

"It's a fight for survival so it's the same thing," claimed Raven.

Kaze sighed. "I'm starting to think we should've listened to Scarlett and stuck around with her a bit longer. We aren't ready for this kind of thing."

As for John…

"How many of you can use magic?"

Pocahontas thought for a second. "Well, Quistis is most skilled in offensive magic. Most of our people have only learned a bit of it. We'll probably have to use guns mostly. As for the magic of our people…Kekata is the only expert, but I've been learning."

"What's the difference?"

"Our magic is much more subtle. It doesn't directly change things so drastically. It works with the environment."

John sighed. "This New World is much more confusing than I thought it would be."

As for the upcoming battle.

Raven gave Quistis a look of disbelief. "You want us to be back-up?"

Quistis nodded. "You don't have a lot of experience so it would be best if you fight as little as possible. I'd prefer that you didn't fight at all, but I doubt that's gonna happen."

"I'm okay with that," said Kaze. "We'll probably die if we try to fight them directly."

"We can try supporting them with white magic," pointed out Sora. "It'll keep them from getting shot or something, and if they are, we can heal them."

"It'll do," said Quistis. "There's a shortage of white mages here."

"I can't use white magic," deadpanned Raven.

"You can be long range support then," decided Quistis. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have troops to guide." And with that, Quistis walked off.

"Does she really expect us to just stay here?" asked Raven.

"I think we should," said Sora.

Raven's eyes bugged out. "What? ! I thought you'd agree with me!"

Sora scratched the back of his head nervously. "I don't like just sitting around either, and I want to help, but we're too new at this to really be of much use."

"Raven, listen to Sora," pleaded Kaze. "He wouldn't be taking this seriously if he didn't have to."

"Hey!"

"Tch!" Raven frowned and looked over towards where the men were preparing to fight. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Well, we're probably better off this way," continued Kaze. "After all the crap we've been put through, we're not in any shape to do any sort of serious fighting."

As soon as Kaze finished speaking, there was a loud cracking sound. It seemed to be a gunshot, so all the men ran toward it. Raven seemed like he wanted to run towards it too, but a glance at Kaze dissuaded him from trying that.

And then a glowing circle appeared around them and an invisible wall of hexagons shot up from it.

There was silence due to shock for a moment before Kaze groaned and did a face palm. "Tell me that didn't just happen."

Sora smiled nervously. "It didn't happen?"

"Well, this proves we have crap luck," declared Raven.

Fortunately for the boys, some of the other back-up had seen what had happened and were shouting about it to the others. It would at least let the others in the vicinity know what had happened.

Sora suddenly groaned. "We're not gonna be able to do anything to help, are we?"

Raven experimentally fired a Fire at the wall. It hit the wall and didn't manage to get through at all. "Nope. We're stuck."

"Didn't we get attacked by a giant Heartless last time this showed up?" asked Sora.

Kaze paled. "You're right…."

Raven grinned. "Maybe we'll get a fight after all!"

Kaze actually grabbed the material that made up Raven's armor and dragged Raven so close that their faces were practically touching. "That's bad! I'm sore in places I didn't even know could be sore!"

Sora pushed the two apart. "Now, now, there's nothing we can do about it now. We'll just have to wait until it disappears…Or the Heartless shows up."

A fairly familiar cry was heard when Sora said that. Kaze groaned. "We're screwed, aren't we?"

"Possibly. Raven summoned his Keyblade. "Get ready to fight. We're at a disadvantage this time."

"No kidding…"

The three boys looked around nervously along with the other back-up surrounding them. They used Barrier when they didn't see anything coming right away so that they could be at least a little prepared.

They heard another piercing cry and looked up as the dangerous looking bird flew across the sky. "Maybe it's not targeting anyone in particular?" suggested Kaze.

That small hope was thrown out the window when the bird turned and started flying for them. They dove out of the way to avoid being landed on and rolled back into a standing position.

"Hey, it's still got all the injuries from the last fight!" pointed out Sora. This was true. The stab wound Sora had given it was still there, and some of the feathers were missing or skewed.

Raven grinned. "About time something went our way!"

The Heartless let out a shriek and flapped its wings at the boys, sending razor wind towards them. They quickly dodged. Then they ganged up on it to try and give it a fatal injury. However, it shot forward off the ground, so the injuries were pretty minor. It turned to face them and gathered energy on the tip of its beak.

"Go behind it!" shouted Sora. The three dashed for the Heartless until they were right behind it. That turned out to be a good idea. As the Heartless fired off the laser, it couldn't reach the boys' position, and it couldn't turn. Sora jumped, and Raven hit the bottom of his feet with his Keyblade, sending him towards the Heartless. As Sora reached it, he grabbed onto a wing and drove his Keyblade into its back. It canceled the laser with a loud shriek and slammed its back into the invisible wall to dislodge Sora. It worked, the brunette let go and fell to the ground while the Heartless flew off.

Kaze caught Sora. "Where did that come from? !"

"What?"

"That move you and Raven did!"

Sora paused. "Where did that come from?"

Raven shrugged. "Beats me. Maybe we think alike or did something like that before or something. We're obviously related so we gotta think at least a little bit alike."

Kaze sighed as he used a Cure on Sora. "Well, if you decide to try something like that again, at least let go before it slams you into something."

"Man, those guys are really laying into it," commented Raven. When the Heartless had flown out of the walled zone, the surrounding men had started either shooting at it, throwing spears, or shooting some weak spells at it. Raven smirked. "Looks like we got an advantage in numbers after all."

Kaze let out a sigh of relief. "Well, at least we have that going for us…"

"How come it's not attacking any of them?" asked Sora. The three watched as the bird-like Heartless flew around, not trying to attack anyone else even when it was getting shot at. It was odd behavior. Sora tapped the invisible wall. "Do you think it's because we're in here?"

"That'd be stupid," declared Raven. "It has that laser! It could blow up those guys, no problem!"

Kaze gave Raven a weird look. "It sounds like you're criticizing it…"

"Well, it's just stupid!"

"I don't think Heartless can think," pointed out Sora. "If they can't think, can they be smart or stupid?" That got him weird looks from his two friends. "What?"

"Can we worry about that later?" asked Kaze. "It's starting to head back!"

Indeed it was, so they all got into fighting positions. The Heartless was starting to look pretty beat up. They really couldn't imagine it flying again. Kaze quickly recast Barrier and then had to dodge a strike from the Heartless's beak.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" Raven shot several of the spells at the Heartless. That did make it stumble before it switched its attention to him. However, Sora cast a Blizzard on it then, causing it to shift to him. Then back to Raven when he cast Fire again. Then Sora when he cast Blizzard. Then Raven. Then Sora. Then Raven. Then Sora. Then it apparently got sick and tired of that pattern and turned its attention to Kaze with a flap of its wings, sending its vacuum blades at him and knocking him into the wall.

"You ******!" shouted Raven. Then he rushed the Heartless. The only reason Sora didn't help him was because he was trying to figure out what the word Raven shouted meant. Right as Raven reached the Heartless, it spun, whipping its tail at him. Raven jumped back quickly enough that he didn't get hit, but his Keyblade did get knocked out of his hands and flew over towards Sora, who reflexively caught it with his free hand. "Shit!"

The Heartless turned toward him…and two Keyblades appeared sticking out of its chest. Raven blinked. Then they cut down in opposite diagonal motions, cutting it in two and revealing Sora behind it. He grinned nervously as the wall started falling. "That was a spur of the moment thing." Then he tossed Raven his Keyblade. "I don't even know how I pulled that off…"

Raven grinned. "We are so going to figure out how to do that."

"So what now?" asked Kaze. Sora looked at one of the men who were looking around for any other Heartless. The man noticed and shrugged. Seemed he didn't know either.

"Are we just supposed to stand around?" complained Raven.

"Actually, that sounds like a good idea," muttered Sora.

"The invaders have surrendered!" shouted someone. "We have won the battle!" Instantly, everyone started cheering, even Raven, Kaze, and Sora.

Shortly afterwards, all the injured were in the wigwam, including the boys and the surviving invaders. It seemed several had turned into Heartless. John had been untied and was looking over what was left of his men.

"What happened? This is less than half as many people as we started with!"

"The guy in charge, the pompous one, what was his name?" asked Quistis.

"Radcliffe?"

"Yeah, that guy. Remember how I said people occasionally can control Heartless because they're so dark themselves?" reminded Quistis. "That's what happened with him. He must have felt a lot of really negative feelings towards these people. It's what caused all those Heartless to appear. Unfortunately, when normal people are around people like Radcliffe for too long, they lose their hearts if they're not strong enough, either through being attacked by one of the Heartless or the amount of darkness coming off of them. That's likely what happened to them. We'll have to keep an eye on these guys too to make sure they don't suddenly become Heartless as well."

John sighed. "Some expedition. It's been a complete disaster!" John spent a moment looking over the survivors. "I don't suppose we might be able to negotiate some lodgings? I doubt there's anywhere safe to stay here besides this village."

"It would depend on your behavior." Everyone who was capable of it stood to attention. Powhatan had arrived. "So far, your people have shown nothing but contempt for us, simply because we are different from you. You assume that we are savages because we try to live in harmony with the land. You tried to kill one of our men. He likely would have died if Quistis had not brought medical techniques from her world."

"In my defense, the natives the Spanish found had some human sacrifice practices."

"That is no excuse! This world is large, your people and culture are evidence enough of that. Even when there is no water to separate people, there are differences in beliefs throughout people. That is why there are so many different tribes. We have different beliefs and practices. We have accepted this and learned to live with others except for occasional skirmishes. However, if all white men are like these men, they would gladly wipe out our people simply because we are different from them."

All the tribesmen murmured in agreement. John frowned as he looked at the remaining men that had come over with him from England.

"What if we learn your ways then?"

That was unexpected. Powatan raised an eyebrow. "You would be willing to give up your beliefs?"

"Well, I don't know about that, but I know that the English aren't exactly perfect. Maybe seeing from another point of view will be good for us."

Pocahontas stepped forward. "Father, you must give them a chance. To condemn many for the actions of a few is wrong. And I'm sure others will come. Will it not be better for us if we show them we are not the savages that they think we are but are as civilized as them?"

Powhatan gave his daughter a considering look before nodding. "You speak the truth. We will give these men a chance. Perhaps it will reflect well on us should others of their tribe travel to this land."

John let out a sigh of relief. "That's good to hear."

"Does that mean we're not in trouble anymore?" Raven whispered to Kaze.

"Probably."

"Guys!" The two looked over at Sora. "Hana's awake!"

"Really?"

"Yeah! C'mon!"

The three hurried over to Hana. She was sitting up and holding her head in pain. "My head…"

Kaze immediately grabbed her shoulders so he could get a closer look at her. "Are you okay? You remember us, don't you?"

"Of course, my head just hurts. It actually hurts to think." She winced as someone nearby started talking loudly. "Loud noises and light don't help either."

"It sounds like you have a hangover," quipped Raven. That just made Hana groan some more. Trust Raven to suggest that when she didn't even have access to alcohol.

After a day of recovering, almost everyone was back to normal thanks to potions, ethers, and lots of white magic. The white men seemed to be feeling a bit nervous and resentful about being in the village, but John had talked to them at length about behaving since they didn't really have anywhere else to go. They seemed to have developed a fairly tenuous truce at the moment at least.

More importantly, there were less Heartless around now so it was safe to go back to the drop off point now.

"I'm sorry you have to carry me," muttered Hana. She was being supported between Sora and Raven since she was still rather disoriented. Kaze was making sure Pluto didn't wander off and attract Heartless.

"It's okay," said Sora. "It's not like we'll have to fight any Heartless with Pocahontas leading the way."

Said woman sent them a smile. "I'm glad Father was understanding enough to let me show you the way again."

"Well it was pretty crazy for a while there," pointed out Kaze. "I think it's okay for exceptions to be made in those sorts of circumstances."

"Tell me about it," muttered Quistis. "What a disaster…I'm going to have to report all of this to Leon so we can figure out what to do."

"Aren't the Heartless back at their normal levels since that Radcliffe guy bit the dust though?" asked Raven. "That was the impression I got."

"There are less Heartless now," agreed Pocahontas. "But there are still more than there were before John and the others arrived. It's worrying. I wonder if it's in response to how these two groups feel about each other…"

"They do respond more to negative emotions," agreed Quistis. "It could be a factor, but sometimes, they suddenly increase or decrease for no reason, like there's some sort of cycle or signal only they are aware of…"

"Too bad you can't study them," joked Raven.

"Someone did try that once," said Quistis. "A man called Ansem the Wise. From what I understand, he was able to discover many things about them, and wrote down his discoveries in several reports, but his world was lost to the Heartless before anyone else saw them and they were scattered across various worlds. Some of them were found a year ago, but they weren't much help unfortunately."

"Maybe if you looked at them some more-"

"They got lost again."

Raven gave her in incredulous look. "How did that happen? That's the sort of thing I'd expect you to keep a close eye on."

"The person in charge of it was killed. The people who knew him don't like to talk about it. I haven't even managed to get a name from them…"

"Did they love him?" asked Hana. Yes, she really said him. Remember, she's still rather disoriented.

"Well, I don't know if I'd use the word 'love,'" explained Quistis. "But they all seemed to be extremely fond of him. On the rare occasion they say anything, they actually look happy for a few minutes before getting angry or depressed…"

"That's awful," said Kaze. "He was really that important?"

"Sounds like it…Although, I think some of it may have been in their minds. Some people are just like that."

"How come no one else has tried studying the Heartless?" asked Sora.

"Because no one knows how to study them," deadpanned Quistis. "You've seen how they get around. It should be impossible to contain them. We can't figure out how Ansem managed to do such a thing…"

"We're here," announced Pocahontas. "Cid should be here in a couple of hours, but would you like me to go ahead and call him?"

Quistis nodded. "I need to report to Leon as soon as possible. It shouldn't be much of an inconvenience for him anyway."

Pocahontas hit the button with a chuckle. "I've always wanted to do that."

"So do we just wait around?" asked Raven.

"Yeah, it should only take a few minutes."

"Pluto!" Sora pushed Pluto away from his pants pocket. "Cut that out! I might drop Hana."

"Did you put some food in your pocket or something?" asked Raven.

"No, there shouldn't be anything in there."

"Well, he's gotta be smelling something in there."

Sora stuck his hand into his pocket and blinked. "What the?" He pulled out what looked like some sort of pinkish bat wing charm with a gold chain. "Where'd this come from?" He turned it over. "And what is it?"

Kaze came over and gave it a look. "It looks sort of like a bat wing. Not a real one of course, but it looks sort of like one."

And that was when a gummi ship appeared. It settled on the ground and an annoyed looking older man with white hair and a moustache who was smartly dressed came out. "There had better be a good reason to call me here ahead of schedule!"

"There was a Heartless invasion," explained Quistis. "And don't complain about it. We're all capable of paying the fee."

"Fine, but you'll have to keep that dog restrained," said the man, giving Pluto a nasty look. "I won't have him making a mess of my ship."

"I don't think I like this guy," muttered Kaze.

"That makes two of us," agree Raven.

"Well, are you coming or not? I don't want to get off schedule any more than I'm going to be."

He wasn't a likeable Cid, but they all climbed on after giving him the munny. At least they'd be able to relax once they got back to the Coliseum.

**End Chapter!**

And that is the end of that. If you want to know why I had to put all of that into one chapter…I figure if they're not gonna get a break, neither should the people reading it. I'll help you understand how they feel to some extent. It might be weird reasoning, but I certainly don't think like a normal person.

In case you were wondering, that was the Cid from Final Fantasy II.

The water having special properties was influenced by the forest haven water from The Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker. I wanted to have a reason for why no Heartless showed up around Grandmother Willow.

The Thunderbird is a creature in Native American mythology that resembles a very large bird. It is considered a cryptid so there's a chance it might be real.

Hana did not do a lot of fighting in this chapter, which was not planned. My writing style consists of an idea of where I want to end up, but I let everything else just happen. Maybe that sounds odd, but it gets me some interesting plot points sometimes.

It may seem like the quartet didn't have much to do with the resolution in this world. There are several reasons for this. They have amnesia, which gives them less sway with other people. Their reason for being there was more for fun than business. That's the only reason they ended up getting involved. They are kids (Okay, technically teenagers) with absolutely no experience in this culture, similar to the English in that regard. The final reason is that it only makes sense to keep those less experienced in combat away from the main fight. This is partly to keep them from bungling up and partly to preserve them for a later fight when they are more experienced. The thing with the Heartless was just a freak occurrence as far as everyone is concerned.

Next chapter will be something of a break for our heroes, you readers, and me. I'll see you then.

**Heartless Files**

Thunderbird-A very large, bird-like Heartless. It is capable of crushing rock with its beak and can create vacuum blades simply by flapping its wings. However, its most dangerous ability is a laser it can shoot out of its beak that is capable of melting rock and can go through Barriers. It's form is familiar somehow…


	11. Rest

Before I start, I would just like to apologize for an embarrassing mistake I made in the last chapter. I mistakenly referred the medicine man in Pocahontas's village as Kocoum instead of Kekata. This was odd as I got his name right in previous chapters. I have gone back and corrected that mistake. I apologize for any confusion this caused. I've never been good with names, but this is first time I've made such a big mistake. Hopefully I can avoid any similar mistakes in future chapters, but if any of you think I might have mixed up names, please tell me.

Now that that's out of the way, another chapter up! This one shouldn't be as long as the last one…probably. We'll be stepping away from the quartet for a short amount of time in this chapter to get a look at what some of the others are doing.

I still own none of the characters. They belong to Square Enix and Disney.

**Chapter Start!**

When they got off the gummi ship, the quartet headed straight to the Coliseum. Scarlett took one look at them, put her hands on her hips, and gave them a look. "Okay, what happened?"

"Uh…Some people showed up from across the ocean," started Kaze.

"They did not get along with the natives," continued Raven. "It made the Heartless population increase."

"To get back to the village, Hana had to drink some sort of water that made a burst of light that killed the Heartless but made her…" Sora trailed off as he tried to think of an appropriate adjective to describe Hana's current condition.

"Hungover," finished Raven.

Scarlett sighed. "Well, did you learn a lesson?"

"We're not ready for war," deadpanned all three boys at the same time. It was kind of creepy.

"Don't drink strange water," groaned. Hana.

Scarlett facepalmed. "That's it. You are not leaving until I know you can take care of yourselves. I'm no Phil, but I should at least be able to teach you enough that you'll be able to do better than that."

"Yes ma'am." This time it was all four at the same time. How were they doing that?

Meanwhile, Quistis was headed over to where Leon-tachi usually stayed at the Coliseum, a rather modest house that was mainly used for sleeping and storing supplies. Aerith could usually be found there doing little things like cooking or patching up people who didn't have access to white magic themselves. That is what Quistis found her doing.

"Oh, Quistis, what are you doing here?"

"Something happened at the Chesapeake," explained Quistis. "I need to see Leon so we can talk about the course of action to take."

Aerith frowned. "I see. Let me fire off the signal." Aerith fired off a spark into the air where it exploded into a burst of light.

Of course, everyone saw that. "What is that?" asked Sora looking up into the sky. Scarlett followed his gaze.

"Oh, that's the signal for a meeting about the Heartless and strategies to deal with them. Something must have happened." She gave the group a suspicious look. "That wouldn't have anything to do with what happened while you were at the Chesapeake, would it?"

"It might," admitted Kaze. "Quistis mentioned seeing Leon about something."

Scarlett sighed. "I hope for your sake that you don't cause this much trouble every time you decide to go to another world."

In retrospect, she should have known better than to tempt Murphy's Law like that.

"Are we gonna learn some more spells?" asked Raven. "That'd be fun."

Scarlett sighed. "You need a hobby that doesn't have to do with beating up Heartless."

Meanwhile, Leon and company had convened at the house, except for Cid Highwind. He was in a gummi ship somewhere.

"The Heartless increased?" asked Leon

Quistis nodded. "Yes, to the point that it was impossible to leave the village. It happened right after some settlers arrived. I think it had something to do with that."

"You found more people?" asked Yuffie. "Where were they from?"

"Somewhere called England. I was under the impression it was across the ocean and the two cultures only recently became aware of one another."

"That would create a lot of darkness," said Aerith. "They don't know a thing about one another. There will be all sorts of misunderstandings, people will get angry, and that will cause hate."

"Were you able to handle it?" asked Leon.

"Well, there were a couple of problems. There were some kids who might have potentially damaged relations by insulting the leader of the settlers. However, he was consumed by the Heartless, along with several others so that should be pointless now." Quistis sighed. "However, relations between the two groups are still tense. It is likely the reason the amount of Heartless has increased."

Leon frowned and bowed his head. "…We better go to the Chesapeake to check it out. If nothing else, we need to explain to these settlers the nature of the Heartless. They'll probably need some additional supplies as well."

"What sort of supplies?" asked Aerith.

"Additional potions and ethers. Perhaps items to heal status inflictions."

"Are we bringing more people with us?" asked Yuffie. Leon nodded.

"That would probably be for the best. Quistis, round up all the qualified individuals you can find. Aerith, you look for Cloud. You always seem to know where he is. Yuffie go tell Scarlett that we won't be around for a while and give her the information Quistis brought on the new Heartless."

"Okey dokey." Yuffie grabbed the files on the desk and ran out. Quistis sighed.

"She didn't even wait to hear when or where we're meeting up."

And Yuffie ran all the way to the Coliseum. When she got there, Scarlett was sweeping away the dirty sand so she could replace it with clean sand. "Hey Red!"

Scarlett looked up when she heard the nickname and saw the familiar ninja. "Yuffie? What is it? I'm not giving you my ruby pin."

"Not that! Me an' Leon an' everyone else are going to the Chesapeake for a little while because the Heartless population went up and some unfamiliar people from some place called England showed up."

Scarlett nodded. "Right, those kids mentioned something like that happening."

Yuffie blinked. "What kids?" Scarlett gestured over to the side. Yuffie redirected her gaze and saw a girl with overly small clothes and hair that looked similar to her own lying on the stone seats. Upon closer inspection, the girl was sleeping. "Who's that?"

"That's Hana. She was in the Chesapeake when this happened. She's still recovering. She just went there to see what other worlds were like. That world was supposed to be pretty safe, but, well…It got dangerous after she arrived. She survived, but she's still recovering. I'm letting her stay here until she's back on her feet and is better at defending herself." She returned her attention to Yuffie. "So is that all you wanted to tell me? Not that I don't care, but you don't really need to tell me that you're leaving. All that means for me is that you won't be winning the next few tournaments."

"A couple of new types of Heartless appeared in the Chesapeake." Yuffie held up a thin folder. "Quistis wants you to add it to that compilation you have."

Scarlett took the folder and frowned. "This Quistis woman isn't very good at drawing is she?"

Yuffie chuckled. "Don't let her hear you say that. She'll whip you good."

"I really doubt she cares what people think about her drawing skills." Scarlett slipped the folder under her arm. "Anything else?"

"Tell people not to go to the Chesapeake for the next few days at least, maybe a couple of weeks."

Scarlett snorted. "I doubt anyone would go otherwise. The only reason Hana and her buddies went were because they were curious about other worlds, and it sounded safe enough for inexperienced fighters like them. Still, I'll make a note of it."

Yuffie grinned. "Great! I'd love to stay and hang out, but I gotta go! Leon didn't say when we're leaving, but I'm sure it's gonna be as soon as possible!" Then she left and ran down the street towards the gummi garage. A split second later, the boys and Pluto rounded the corner on the other end of the street and walked over to the coliseum with some food in their arms.

"We're back!" shouted Sora.

"That's nice," said Scarlett. "You just missed Yuffie Kisaragi."

"Who?" asked Raven.

"You remember the Leon guy I told you about before? He's pretty much the guy in charge who is trying to find a way to get rid of the Heartless. Yuffie is a friend of his. She's almost always around him, and she's a very good fighter. If you'd been just a bit faster, you would've been able to meet her."

Kaze shrugged. "Easy come, easy go."

"Exactly." Scarlett took a look at them and then took out the folder she'd been given moments before. "You guys were in the Chesapeake, right? Did you see the new Heartless? I was given some information on them, but the pictures aren't so great and the information they have on the big one is kind of sketchy."

"Yeah we did," said Sora. "Why did you get information on them?"

"There's a compilation of the different types of Heartless and what they're capable of kept here. That way the fighters can have some idea of what they're in for when they go to another world."

Kaze perked up. "That'd be pretty useful. Can we take a look after everyone eats?"

Scarlett shrugged. "Sure, no problem. Anyone can look at it."

And while they were having a carefree time, others were worrying about…various problems.

"I just don't get it," complained Raxkii. She glared at one of the windows of the Gray Room while Lexaeus sat in the chair next to her trying to solve one of his puzzles. He tended to be the one who listened to other members when they had something to gripe about. "How did I end up on stand-by? I've had a mission every day up 'til now because of my Keyblade!"

"It is likely due to your attack on Riku."

Raxkii huffed. "He had it coming. Who cares if he has a Keyblade? Everyone would be better off without him." Two arms suddenly encircled her from behind.

"Patience is a virtue."

Raxkii jumped up and spun around. She let out a small growl when she saw who it was. "Lexla! Don't do that!"

The blonde straightened with a chuckle. "You're just too fun to tease."

Raxkii rolled her eyes as she brushed herself off. "Yeah, yeah, you've said that before."

"Plus I thought I'd offer you some advice," said Lexla with a smirk.

Raxkii gave her a look. "How is patience advice?"

"Isn't it obvious? If you'd attacked anyone else, you wouldn't have gotten in trouble, but Riku has a Keyblade like you. You two are the only ones that can release hearts from Heartless and construct Kingdom Hearts. Two is better than one obviously, so the Superior wants Riku alive for now. However, once Kingdom Hearts is complete, you'll be free to kill him however you want."

"What she says has merit," agreed Lexaeus.

Raxkii sighed. "You don't get it. Whenever I even think of him, I feel so angry that I just have to do something about it!"

"Nobodies can't feel," quipped Lexaeus.

"I know, I know…" Why does everyone remind Raxkii of that when she uses the word 'feel'? It's not like there's any other way to describe why she wants to kill Riku. "Didn't you go on a mission with Luxord?" she asked Lexla.

Lexla shrugged. "It was pretty easy. The only reason he didn't come back was because he wanted to go to a tea party in Wonderland." Raxkii and Lexaeus both made a face at that. "Yeah, I know. Wish I knew why he spent so much time there…"

Back at the coliseum:

Scarlett looked over the improved sketching. "Well, it's better than it was before at the very least." She slipped the papers back into the folder. "Now, how 'bout-What is that? !" she shouted pointing at Sora.

Sora blinked and looked at the charm he'd started playing with. "I'm not sure. I found it in my pocket."

"Your pocket? !" It looked like Scarlett was about to have a coronary.

"What's the big deal?" asked Raven. "It's just some sort of wing charm."

"It is a summon stone!" Scarlett got blank looks from the boys. "A stone that lets you summon a magical creature. They are very rare and very dangerous."

Sora gave the seemingly harmless charm a cautious look. "How dangerous?"

"It depends on the creature summoned." Scarlett took a deep breath. "Are you sure you didn't just stumble across it and pick it up?" Sora shook his head. "That could complicate things. The only other way you would've ended up with one is if the creature decided it would like to be summoned by you, and if that's the case you can't get rid of it."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" whispered Kaze.

"Sora has to summon it and hope it's friendly."

"Why are we whispering?" asked Raven. Scarlett shrugged.

"How do I summon it?" asked Sora.

"First, everyone goes to the stands to get out of the line of fire."

So everyone except Sora climbed into the stands. "Now, I don't actually have any experience in summoning, but with summon stones you usually force mana into it until it activates."

Sora looked over at the group nervously. "Is that safe?"

Scarlett chuckled nervously. "I don't know. I've never seen an initial summoning before either."

"I thought you were a magic specialist," accused Raven.

"I specialize in white and black magic. Summon magic is something else entirely."

"What if I use too much magic?" asked Sora nervously.

Scarlett paused. "No idea."

Sora gulped. "Well, here goes nothing." He started channeling magic into it and almost immediately got a reaction.

The most obvious thing was the large creature in front of Sora. It resembled the Heartless from the Chesapeake except the visible skin was a healthy pink, its beak was white, the feathers around the ruff of its neck and its hips were red, and the other feathers were violet. It also had some sort of…spines in the front. The lowest right one had three conjoined gold rings and an orange jewel hanging from it.

The second, less obvious thing was what Sora was holding. It was a Keyblade, but it wasn't the one he'd been using before. The handle was red, the guards were shaped like the spines on the creature with an orange jewel on the bottom where the chain of gold circles extended and connected to the wing charm. The shaft was a simple blue rod, and the 'teeth' was a circle with a smaller circle on the side with what looked like three flower petals extending from it.

The creature inspected Sora for a moment before rubbing affectionately against Sora's face.

"Why does it look like the Thunderbird?" Kaze asked nervously.

"Sometimes, summons get corrupted and create a darker version of themselves," explained Scarlett. "I guess when you beat it, you caught the interest of the original one. I don't know if it'll let more than one person summon it though…"

"How come he gets a new Keyblade?" muttered Raven.

Scarlett couldn't answer that. She didn't know how that worked.

Sora looked over the summon curiously. "Do I get to name her?"

"How can you tell it's a girl?" asked Raven. Sora just shrugged.

"I certainly don't recognize it, so go right ahead. I suggest you avoid any stupid or degrading names though," warned Scarlett. "Summons do not react well to insults."

"Okay." Sora absentmindedly scratched the large bird behind its crest. It made a happy noise. What would be a good name? "Do you guys have any ideas?"

Raven suddenly slammed a fist into an open palm. "Tora! You gotta name it Tora! It rhymes with Sora!"

Kaze groaned. "We are not naming it based on rhyme!"

"Why not? People do it with twins!"

"They're not twins!"

"How 'bout Odette?" suggested Sora. "Do you like that name?" The summon nodded. "Great! I guess that makes us partners!"

Since it was obviously safe, everyone (minus Hana who was still sleeping) came down. Pluto sniffed at Odette curiously.

"Is that always going to be around?" asked Kaze. "I'm not sure we can fit it into a gummi ship."

"Summons can be dismissed by will. Although, it looks like maintaining Odette's presence is draining your magic slightly. She'll be automatically dismissed when you run out of magic simply because you won't be able to maintain the summon. I suggest you learn how to dismiss at will though, otherwise it's gonna be difficult for you to use magic when you fight."

"You don't know how to do that, do you," deadpanned Kaze.

Scarlett coughed nervously. "Well, I'm sure you can figure it out given enough time Sora. Although I'd suggest getting an idea of what Odette is capable of first in case it takes a while."

"What about us?" asked Raven. "I'd rather not stand around doing nothing."

"Neither would I." Scarlett pulled out her rapier. "How 'bout I show you guys a couple of spells to tide you over for a while?" Raven got a creepy grin on his face. "…Don't make that face around me ever again." Raven's face fell. "Since Raven is being impatient, Kaze gets his spell first."

"What? !"

"The spell's called Shell." Scarlett performed the spell on both of them. It resembled Barrier, but with a green tint. "As you can guess, it's similar to Barrier, except it protects you against magic. It won't do a thing against physical attacks." She turned to Raven. "You get to learn Thunder."

Raven got a confused face. "Like a sonic boom?"

Scarlett shook her head. "No, it creates lightning."

"So, it makes lightning, but it's called Thunder?" Raven was obviously confused by the naming.

"I don't get it either."

And Sora looked at Odette curiously. "Can you do the laser thing that the other Heartless could do?"

"No lasers!" shouted Scarlett. "I do not want to have to repair anything!"

Sora grinned nervously and nodded.

About half an hour later, Sora had gotten an idea of what Odette could do. She could use Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, and a spell Scarlett had identified as Water. That sort of made up for the fact that he was having his magic drained. She could also do the Vacuum wind thing her Heartless counterpart was capable of.

The only reason Sora didn't find out anything else was because he ran out of magic and Odette had to go back to wherever she came from. Since he wouldn't be able to do anything at the moment, he decided to see how Raven and Kaze were doing. Raven was happily making lightning come down all over the place. Kaze was having a bit more trouble.

"This isn't nearly as easy as Barrier was…"

"Want me to hit you with Thunder?" asked Raven.

"No!"

Sora chuckled before turning to Scarlett. "Can I have an ether?"

"I'd prefer if you bought your own."

Sora blinked. "Huh? How come?"

"Well, you can't expect to always be able to just receive them from kind strangers. You'll have to learn how to maintain a steady supply on your own. That means using your own munny."

"You're just being cheap aren't you?" deadpanned Sora.

Scarlett's eyebrow twitched. "I'm serious! They sell potions and ethers on other worlds, and I'm sure it'll be more convenient to go to those worlds for supplies than to come back to this one whenever you need something."

Sora sighed. "Fine, anyone else want to go?"

"I'll go," volunteered Raven. "I've already figured out how to use Thunder anyway."

Pluto suddenly ran down and circled Sora a couple of times while barking. "I guess Pluto wants to come too."

"Then take him," said Scarlett. "Dogs get antsy if they're just left sitting around."

Pluto seemed glad to get out of the Coliseum. It was surprising that he was still able to run around after the events of the past couple of days.

"Do you think he's some sort of high energy breed?" asked Raven as Pluto tried to get him to play with him again.

Sora shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, I know what some kinds of dogs look like, but I don't think he's any of them."

"Hey, did you bring any munny?" asked Raven.

Sora nodded. "Yeah, all the munny left from the Chesapeake." He patted his pocket for emphasis.

"We sure ended up with a lot of munny," commented Raven. "I think you could consider that a legitimate job."

"Yeah, but that was really unusual," pointed out Sora. "I don't think things like that happen very often."

Raven made a displeased noise. "That's true. Guess we should be careful about how much we spend."

"We still need to buy supplies though," pointed out Sora. "I guess this is what Scarlett was talking about." He sighed. "There are so many skills we're missing that normal people have."

"Nah, that's something everyone needs to learn," said Raven. "I bet there's at least a couple of fighters that are flat broke 'cause they don't spend munny right."

This unusual debate (for a couple of teenagers) continued until after they left the store with their purchases.

"Maybe we can write it down?" suggested Sora.

"Where would we keep that sort of thing?"

"The same place we keep potions and ethers I guess."

"Wouldn't they get stained?"

"The potions and ethers are in bottles."

"The leak sometimes though."

Their debate stopped when they heard Pluto start barking. The glanced over and noticed that his teeth were bared and he was in a sort of attack position. That usually happened when he noticed a Heartless. They followed his gaze and saw several Soldiers around a person in a black cloak who seemed to be injured. The two quickly hurried over, summoning their Keyblades as they did so.

It actually took only a few moments to get rid of the Soldiers.

"That was easier than I remembered it being," mused Sora.

Raven grinned. "We must be getting good at this!"

Sora turned his attention to the person. "Are you okay?"

The person straightened and Sora couldn't help recoiling a bit. It was a man whose face seemed to be split in two diagonally. The left side was a normal pink tone, but the right side was a darker brown color. His hair shared the split. The left side was snow white, and the right side was pitch black. He had a black cloak and appeared to be wearing a black suit under it. "Thank you. The Heartless caught me by surprise and injured my arm. I wasn't able to fight at full strength."

"We have some potions…" Sora dug out an ether. "Or I could use Cure!"

"No!" The man glanced over at the bag of bottles. "My body can't handle Cure. I'll need a potion, and I'll need to apply it in a special way."

"How come?" asked Raven. "It doesn't even look that bad."

"Are you familiar with tissue transplants?" Both gave him blank looks. He sighed. "Grab the bags. I'll explain on the way to wherever you're going, provided you take care of any Heartless that appear."

Raven foisted his bag off on Sora so that he could have some 'fun.'

"A transplant is when you take a body part from one person and use it to replace a defective body part in another person. It's quite common in some worlds, mine included. I had several skin transplants as a child. However, this causes some complications. You know about blood types?"

"You can't mix them or people die?" hazarded Sora. They had been briefly mentioned in a first aid book Sora found in one of the gummi ships, but he hadn't really been paying much attention to the content.

"Correct. There's a similar problem with tissue transplants. Normally, the body would reject an organ from another person's body unless it was from one's identical twin. This can be avoided by taking medicine to weaken your immune system. However, it has been found that using Cure on a person will return the immune system function to normal, causing the body to reject the transplanted organ, usually resulting in death."

"So if Sora Cured you, your skin would fall off?" asked Raven.

"More or less. Drinking a potion will have a similar effect, but if you apply it to a specific area, it's safe."

"How come you were fighting Heartless then?" asked Sora.

"I didn't plan to," muttered the man. "I'm a doctor. I was here checking up on a patient to make sure his transplant wasn't being rejected. It's a real danger with people getting thrown to so many different kinds of worlds. They ambushed me when I was heading to the gummi garage."

"You're a doctor?" Sora suddenly got a good idea. "What causes amnesia?"

The man raised an eyebrow at that. "Why do you want to know something like that?"

"We have amnesia," explained Sora.

The man looked from Sora to Raven and back again. "Both of you?"

Sora nodded. "And two others."

The man gave Sora a look of disbelief. "How severe?"

"We can't remember anything."

"…There are two causes for total amnesia, head trauma and psychogenic. I doubt four people could all have head injuries that would cause amnesia, so it's likely psychogenic."

Sora frowned at the unfamiliar word. "Psycho what?"

"It's due to a large mental shock," explained the man.

At that point, they'd reached the coliseum and walked in. "We're back!" shouted Raven.

"Did you get the potions?" Scarlett asked. Then she did a double-take. "You brought Black Jack? !"

Raven gave the man a weird look. "Is that seriously your name?"

Black Jack nodded before turning to the red mage. "They drove off some Heartless, and I came here so I could fix my arm."

Scarlett gave the two boys a nervous look. "You didn't try Curing him, did you? He stabbed the last guy who tried that."

Sora sweatdropped. "I offered him a potion first."

Black Jack held out a hand. "Speaking of which, would you mind giving me a potion?" Sora quickly handed over the potion. "Thank you." Then the doctor went over to the stands, sat down and started taking off his cloak. Sora watched curiously as he started taking off his jacket and shirt. He winced when he saw the patchwork of scars covering Black Jack's body.

"Sora, start working on dismissing and summoning Odette at will," instructed Scarlett.

"What about me?" asked Raven.

"Practice Thunder a bit more. Maybe cast Fire and Blizzard at Kaze occasionally to see how his Shell is coming along."

"Hey!"

"Aw, I wanted to learn another spell."

"I want to make sure you know how to use what you already know first," said Scarlett. "I don't want you accidentally electrocuting someone because you don't have enough experience with it."

Raven huffed but grabbed a couple of ethers and headed over to where Kaze was still practicing Shell. Sora grabbed one too and glanced at Black Jack. He was currently holding the skin on his arm apart with something that looked like scissors and stitching…something. "What are you doing?"

"I'm stitching the muscle back together. Fortunately, the damage is minimal."

"Oh…Doesn't that hurt?"

"I administered a local anesthesia."

Sora wasn't sure what that was, but he assumed that it made it so that it didn't hurt to stitch up your own arm. He down the ether he was holding and watched as Odette appeared. "Hi, Odette. I'm supposed to learn how to dismiss and summon you. I hope that's not a problem." Odette didn't make any upset movements so he assumed it was all right. He started trying to figure out how to go about dismissing Odette, while watching Black Jack curiously.

After roughly 20 minutes, Odette did disappear. Sora didn't know if it was because he'd successfully figured out how to dismiss Odette or if he'd run out of magic. He experimentally tried to cast a Blizzard. All that came out was a bit of frost. He sighed and went to grab an ether, blinking when he noticed that Black Jack was gone from his spot. After looking around, he saw the doctor and Scarlett over near Hana. He wandered over. "What are you guys doing?"

Scarlett looked up in surprise. "Oh, did you manage to dismiss Odette?"

Sora shook his head with a sigh. "I don't think so." He turned to Black Jack. "Are you treating Hana?"

"She doesn't need any treatment that I can give her," said Black Jack, holding up a small green sphere. "I used a Scan materia to look her over. The only thing wrong with her is some rather severe exhaustion. She just needs some more rest. I checked her head, but there are no signs of any previous head injuries that would have caused complete amnesia."

Scarlett sighed. "The one time you offer your services for free, and there's nothing wrong with the patient."

Sora leaned forward to get a look at the sphere Black Jack was holding. "That's a small scanner."

"No, it's a spell. Black Jack can't use magic the normal way because he's such a skeptic so he uses materia, which anyone can use as long as they have one."

Black Jack suddenly hooked the collar of Sora's shirt. "What's this?"

Sora blinked. "My shirt?"

"No, there's some sort of scar on your chest."

Sora blinked as he realized what Black Jack was talking about. "Oh! I'd actually forgotten about that! I just woke up with that. I don't know how I got it."

"Take off your shirt." Scarlett and Sora both gave him a look of disbelief. "Well, what are you waiting for?" Sora decided to listen to the older man (He was kind of scary.) and quickly took off his shirt.

Scarlett let out a hiss as she got a good look at the scar. "That's nasty."

Sora gave her a confused look. "I thought you knew about it."

"I knew you had a scar, but I didn't think it was so…large."

Black Jack carefully fingered the scar, frowning all the while. "This doesn't seem like a survivable injury."

Sora's eyes bugged out. "What? !"

"Given the width of the injury, the depth would be such that your heart should have been destroyed beyond repair. It would have killed you instantly."

"Now hold on," said Scarlett. "It obviously was survivable if Sora's standing here right now. Besides, I've seen wide injuries that are only an eighth of a centimeter deep. It depends on the weapon that caused the injury."

"That's true," agreed Black Jack. "Still, I'd like to get a closer look." He held up the materia and Sora felt a sort of tingle wash over him for a second. Black Jack frowned as he looked at the materia. "It's about as deep as it is wide. It looks like there's a lot of scar tissue, but his heart seems to be free of scar tissue and is functioning normally."

"So, I'm okay?" asked Sora.

"You don't seem to be in any immediate danger. Strenuous activity might cause some problems."

"He just got back from a mini-war in the Chesapeake, and he had to fight for quite a while without a break," said Scarlett. "I don't think Sora needs to worry about strenuous activity having a bad effect on his injury."

Black Jack made a noise but nodded. "If you're ever in Traverse Town, stop by my clinic. I'll give you a check-up."

"Okay, that's nice of you," commented Sora.

"Disturbingly so," muttered Scarlett.

Black Jack rolled his eyes at Scarlett. "Yes, I'm aware of that." He nodded at Sora. "My thanks for you and your brother's assistance." And with that he turned and walked away.

"That guy is really…" Sora tried to think of a word to describe the man.

Scarlett groaned. "Please don't start looking up to him. He is not a good role model, especially for kids."

"Uh, sure…" Sora absentmindedly fingered the scar going across his chest. "Do you think this means I can't fight?"

Scarlett blinked. "You're asking me?" Sora nodded. "Well, I'm not a doctor or anything, but I figure that if you didn't have any problems with it in the Chesapeake, you won't have to worry about it. Maybe drink potions regularly, just in case, and you're already doing that for that concussion you got over there." A yelp from Kaze caught their attention. It looked like his Shell had failed and a Fire had hit his arm. "Stop, drop, and roll Kaze!" shouted Scarlett while running down and using a Water on him. Sora winced in sympathy.

*Scene Change*

Raxkii sighed as she plopped down next to Axel on the clocktower. Axel smirked at her. "And how was your day off?"

"Boring. I'd have rather been doing a Heart collecting mission." Raxkii took a bite of her sea-salt ice cream. "So what did you do?"

"Same old, same old, I did some reconnaissance with some fighting thrown in." Axel stretched. "Maybe I should attack Riku, see if I can get a couple of days off."

"Raxkii was let off lightly." The two redheads looked up as Saïx arrived and sat down on Axel's other side. "If you attacked Riku before the time was right, you would be forced to assist Vexen in his lab for a month."

Axel made a disgusted sound. "Ugh, no thank you! I'd rather stick to the combat missions than have to deal with whatever that mad scientist has cooking in his secret laboratory."

Raxkii snickered. "I don't think it's secret if everyone knows about it."

"Don't know what he does in there though," pointed out Axel.

"Correction: We don't know what he does in there," drawled Saïx. "The higher ranking members do." Then he gave Raxkii a look. "If you attack Riku again, Xemnas may make you assist Vexen in his experiments. He may even let Vexen study you like he wants."

Raxkii frowned. "I don't see why we need Riku. We only need one Keyblade to make Kingdom Hearts."

"With two Keyblades, you get it twice as fast," explained Axel. "I don't know about you, but I know I want my heart back now."

"As do I," agreed Saïx.

Raxkii shifted a bit at that. She couldn't understand what that was like for them. She still had emotions.

"On an interesting side note, Kingdom Hearts is progressing at a faster rate," continued Saïx.

Raxkii rolled her eyes. "Well, yeah, you just explained that's why I can't kill Riku."

Saïx shook his head. "No, Riku has been fighting Heartless as long as you have been in the Organization. For progress to increase now, more people have to have received Keyblades."

Raxkii gasped. "Or maybe…One came back?"

"I don't think people can come back from the dead," commented Axel.

"However, he was 'killed' by a Keyblade," pointed out Saïx. "We have an idea of what sort of effect it has on Nobodies and Heartless, but the effects it has on humans is not entirely known."

"They usually just lose their hearts," deadpanned Axel.

"But there was at least one case where something unexpected happened," pointed out Saïx.

Axel gave Saïx a weird look. "You sure are being weird about this. The only one who seems to want him around more than you is Raxkii."

"I simply recall reading a report that stated that his heart was…" Saïx paused, thinking of an appropriate word. "…Unusual. I doubt the reaction was normal."

Raxkii frowned. "What report?"

"I have access to information inaccessible to others since I am the one who files all the reports."

"…That's not what I asked."

"Don't be so surprised," said Axel. "He had a Keyblade and was well-known so of course the Organization took an interest in him."

Raxkii paused. "What did it say?"

Saïx shrugged. "Just that he may have been connected to someone called Ventus."

Raxkii huffed and fingered her popsicle stick before standing up. "I'm gonna head back, maybe ask around some." Raxkii formed a dark corridor and left through it. Axel sighed.

"She's changed."

"Revenge does that to a person," said Saïx, expression not changing at all.

"Doesn't it at least…make you think it's a shame that such a sweet girl ended up like…that?"

Saïx snorted. "All it takes is one bad day. We are evidence of that."

Axel sighed. "You've changed too."

"As have you."

"Think we'll go back to the way we were once we get our hearts back?"

Saïx snorted. "After what we've learned and done? I suppose we can try, but I doubt we'll ever be the same again."

*Scene Change*

"What is this stuff?" asked Raven, poking at nasty looking stuff in his bowl.

"It's curry. I had to get something cheap today," explained Scarlett. "I also wanted it to be something that Hana could eat pretty easily."

Hana was up and about, but still seemed pretty tired. She was eating really slowly and moving sluggishly. She wasn't talking much either…

"Did you get Shell down?" asked Sora. Kaze nodded.

"Mostly. I'll show you tomorrow."

Sora sighed. "I'm still having trouble with Odette. It might be another couple of days before I have the summoning and dismissing thing down." Summoning was much harder than he thought it would be.

"So, are we learning more spells tomorrow?" asked Raven.

Scarlett shook her head. "No, there's a tournament every other day, remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

"You guys can watch though. Maybe you'll see a technique that will prove useful." That made the three guys perk up.

"What sort of people usually compete?" asked Kaze.

"Well, it's usually a pretty mixed bunch. Given the situation of the Chesapeake though, the stronger people probably won't be there. I'm gonna see if I can drag Mulan in. She needs more experience and self-confidence."

Raven sighed. "It sounds like it's not going to be nearly as interesting as it usually is. Are you sure we can't sign up?"

Scarlett sighed and shook her head. "Sorry, but you have to pass Phil's test, no exceptions."

Sora shrugged. "I think it'll be nice to be able to watch other people fight for once. Besides, maybe we'll meet someone new tomorrow."

**Chapter End!**

Some of you may be wondering why Yuffie didn't recognize Kairi. Well, Yuffie never met or saw Kairi, so unless she saw a picture, Yuffie wouldn't know what Kairi looked like. I doubt that Sora had a picture of Kairi on him when the Destiny Islands were destroyed, and since I'm pretty sure the pictures in the journal were just for the players, hardly anyone actually knows what Kairi looked like.

Odette is Valefor. Since Valefor has only been in one game that I know of, I figured it wouldn't be a well-known summon so Sora had to come up with his own name for it. Plus you could name Valefor whatever you wanted in FFX, so why not extend that to Kingdom Hearts?

I am not very good at drawing, but I did try drawing a picture of Sora's new Keyblade and put it on Deviantart. I will put a link to it on my profile page, but if that doesn't work, just go into Deviantart and type in the keywords Sora, Betrayal, Valefor, and Keyblade.

Black Jack is a character created by Osamu Tezuka, who created Astro Boy. Tezuka was influenced by Disney, and Disney was influenced by Tezuka, so I figured he'd actually fit in pretty well. Plus, I think he's awesome. Expect to see more of him.


	12. And Relaxation

That's right, I'm posting two chapters at the same time. Since these chapters have less action than the previous ones, I figured I'd post them at the same time. On a side note, it didn't take long to write these two chapters, but due to end of semester exams it took a while to get around to editing them.

Do I really need to give a disclaimer at this point?

**Chapter Start!**

Due to the tournament being pretty popular, the quartet ended up in the highest row of seats. Apparently, one of the ways the resistance raised munny was by selling tickets to the fights, and the closer to the ring, the more munny the seats cost. The top seats were practically free so that was where the quartet ended up.

"How much longer until they start?" asked Raven, who was sitting between Kaze and Hana.

Kaze glanced at a sundial that was mounted on the corner of the coliseum stands. "About half an hour." Raven groaned.

Half an hour later, the four were conversing on random stuff that came to mind while Kaze and Raven were double checking on Hana and Sora regularly. Hana was doing better, but was still yawning a lot and looked like she was trying not to look tired. Sora seemed fine.

"Meeko is like a little bandit!" said Sora. "He got into John's stuff and he's got his fur mask."

"I can actually see that," agreed Raven.

Hana giggled. "He was a cute little bandit."

Kaze leaned forward. "I think the matches are starting. There are a couple of people down in the ring. I don't recognize either of them though…"

Sora heard the beat of a wing to his left and glanced over. He was expecting a bird. Instead he saw a man in black leather…With long silver hair…and a black wing coming out of his right shoulder. Sora had to blink at that one. The man was examining Sora with an odd look on his face so Sora figured it would be okay to glance at his other side. No wing there.

"Why do you only have a wing on one side?"

That got everyone else to look over and see the odd man. "Whoa, that looks cool!" said Raven.

The winged man raised an eyebrow as he looked between Sora and Raven. Then he focused on Sora again. "Do you know who I am?"

"Uh, should I?" Sora couldn't recall seeing the man during his brief time on this world.

The man smirked. "I suppose not. Is anyone sitting here?" The quartet shook their heads. Pluto walked over and sniffed at him curiously as he sat down next to Sora, folding his wing so that it wouldn't hit anyone.

"How come you have a wing?" asked Sora. Okay, maybe that was rude, but he didn't exactly have a lot of tact.

"I was experimented on while still in the womb." It was disturbing how he could keep a straight face while saying that.

Raven immediately straightened. "We got experimented on too!"

The other three teens groaned out of exasperation. "We did not get experimented on!" insisted Kaze.

"Of course we were! We woke up with absolutely no memory in a maze of a castle where everything was sterile white!"

The winged man made a face. "I hate white."

"And why else would we be in that sort of situation if we weren't being experimented on?" continued Raven.

"Well…" Okay, it was a really weird situation. Kaze couldn't come up with an explanation for it. "I'm not sure, but don't experiments happen in labs?"

"I think anyone experimenting on us would have been more careful," added Hana. "Instead of just leaving us lying around like how we woke up."

"And I had that big scar on my chest!"

Kaze nodded. "Sora's got a point. I think a doctor would have treated that instead of just-Hey! What're you doing?"

The winged man had quite suddenly lifted the hem of Sora's shirt up so that he could get a look at the aforementioned scar. He looked at it curiously for a moment. "Maybe you died."

Hana closed her eyes in thought…Or maybe she was just resting her eyes. "If Sora died he wouldn't be here."

The man raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?" He let go of the shirt, letting it cover the scar again. "Well, if that's how you feel…"

"Oh, isn't that Mulan?" asked Kaze, hoping to change the subject.

Mulan was in the ring, and she looked incredibly nervous. She was only facing a trio of goblins though. The winged man glanced at her. "She's too pathetic to win even this match."

Sora immediately took offense at that. "Hey! I like her! She's a nice person!"

"That does not change the fact that she's pathetic." He pointed at the ring, where Mulan was dodging the goblins' attacks and trying to counter desperately. "This is an easy match. She should be able to kill them easily before they can attack her. Instead, she panics and can't react quickly enough to do so. Then she is unable to keep her head as she tries to avoid her attacks and lashes out randomly trying to hit them. Due to the fact she is not aiming, most, if not all, of her attacks will miss."

The quartet turned to look at Mulan's performance. Well, it was true that you could tell she was panicking from up there, and none of her attacks were hitting…

"I hate to say this, but I think he has a point," said Kaze.

The group then watched as Mulan lost the match. It was actually kind of painful to watch.

"Do you think there's any way for us to help her?" Sora asked the winged man.

"I doubt it. What's wrong with her is all in her head." He got some blank looks. "She has almost no self-confidence."

"How do you fix something like that?" questioned Raven.

"Do I look like someone who knows?"

The quartet spent the rest of the tournament talking about how to help Mulan with her problem. I am not exaggerating. They didn't even pay attention to the other matches or who won the tournament.

"Nothing interesting ever happens during these things," complained the winged man. "The strongest fighters are always on some other world, and when one does enter, they never have anyone at their level to fight."

"Scarlett wouldn't let us enter," commented Kaze. "Something about having to go through training with some guy named Phil."

"Yes, you generally need to prove yourself capable of fighting to be allowed to enter." The man smirked. "However, while that is the easiest method to prove yourself capable, it is not the only way. Several individuals who were already known to be strong fighters were allowed to compete in the tournament without earning Phil's approval."

That caused them to sit up straight. "How do we do that?"

The man blinked. "…Did you all just talk at the same time?"

"That happens sometime."

"Let's see…I suppose that if you were able to take care of a strong enough boss Heartless by yourself that would be sufficient."

"We already did that!" proclaimed Raven.

"I meant by yourself, not as a group. In addition, boss Heartless have different levels of strength, depending on location, abilities, level, etc. You'd have to bring back evidence of defeating the Heartless as well, not just a tale. Also, if it is an unknown type of Heartless, you will be less likely to be allowed entrance since no one will be aware of how strong it is. If others encounter it and confirm that it is strong, you may be considered later though."

"…Why does it have to be so complicated?" muttered Raven.

Hana happened to glanced down and noticed Scarlett down in the arena, cleaning up the bloody sand. "Oh, hey! Scarlett!" Said mage looked up in their direction and frowned.

The winged man abruptly stood up. "Seems I've outstayed my welcome. It was nice seeing you Sora." Then he flew straight up just as a large block of ice appeared where he had been. A second later, a bespectacled Scarlett had dashed all the way up and was looking Sora over like she expected him to have some sort of injury on him.

"Are you all right? ! He didn't do anything to you did he? !"

"Huh?" Sora pulled himself out of Scarlett's hands. "What are you talking about?"

"You were sitting next to Sephiroth!"

"That's his name?" asked Kaze.

"Weird name," quipped Raven.

"He's a psychopath! He tried to destroy his home world, and he hates people!"

Well, that was shocking. It took a moment to recover. "Then why did he just sit there?" asked Sora. "He never did anything threatening. He just talked."

Scarlett frowned in thought. "You must have caught his attention enough that he decided to put on his normal person mask. Most psychopaths have something like that. I don't see why you would catch his attention though."

"We never told him our names." Everyone looked at Hana. "There's no way he should've known, but he knew Sora's name…"

Sora blinked. "Hey, you're right. How did he know?"

"Whatever the reason, I suggest that you avoid him as much as possible," instructed Scarlett. She sighed. "Considering that, it might actually be safer for you to spend more of your time on other worlds." Scarlett raised an eyebrow when she saw them perk up a bit. "That doesn't mean you can just run off again. You need to know a bare minimum of spells first." They groaned.

Yeah, they didn't want to have to deal with something like the Chesapeake again, but just sitting around and training got boring surprisingly quickly, even if you were learning something cool like magic.

"Now, get down here and help me clean up. Then you can get in some practice before dinner."

"Do you…" Everyone looked at Sora. He took a deep breath. "Do you think we knew him before we lost our memories?"

"Even if you did, you'd be better off forgetting him. Sephiroth is the type of person who thinks that people are things for him to use. He has actually manipulated people to the point that they don't think they're real people or have a mental breakdown. And that's if he thinks you're useful. He usually just kills people, and he is the strongest person I have ever seen. Even Hercules has trouble with him."

"So, he's a really, really dangerous crazy guy," simplified Raven.

Scarlett nodded. "Exactly."

"We'll stay away from him," assured Kaze. "I don't want to have to worry about someone like that."

"I wonder how he knew Sora's name though," commented Hana. "And why was he so…nice to us?"

Scarlett sighed. "We'll have to try and figure it out. He can be hard to predict though. He might have just done it for no reason, or he might have done it to distract us from something he has planned that has nothing to do with you." The mage sighed. "You have to be able to think 200 moves ahead to have any chance of predicting that guy…"

Sora made a displeased noise. "Why is it the one person who's recognized me is a known psychopath?"

You have to admit, that is pretty bad luck. Hopefully, that would be the worst news they got about whatever happened in their past.

*Scene Change*

Riku pulled his shirt off a branch for the nth time. He'd been in forests before, but this one was particularly annoying and creepy. It was dark, foreboding, the trees seemed to be glaring at you with scary faces, and the branches seemed to actually be reaching for you.

These last two characteristics could either be due to imagination or the fact that this was a remnant of a world destroyed by Heartless. The remnants or these worlds tended to be pretty dark in all sorts of ways. Traverse Town was the most well known, but there were actually some others. They were just harder to reach or considered a particularly dangerous to live.

Riku wasn't bothered by these things. He wielded the darkness, and on the rare occasion he was attacked by Heartless, they were easily taken care of. Really, the things Riku found troublesome were food and rest. Since Riku traveled around, food could be hard to find at times. Rest was less difficult. You can sleep anywhere, but the desirability tends to vary from place to place. Just sleeping outside isn't so great because you have to keep an eye out for anything that might decide to attack and kill you in your sleep, which is especially difficult when you're on your own. The danger of this happening is more likely in a world like the forest Riku was in. It would be much better if he could find a cheap inn to sleep in, or even an abandoned building to spend the night in.

Just as Riku thought this, he noticed something suspiciously convenient in the distance. Walking forward a few feet, Riku confirmed that what he saw was a little cottage. He snuck closer to it, inch by inch, and he was surprised to hear humming coming from inside.

People were a rarity in worlds like this, so it was very odd to just run into another one. Riku summoned the Keyblade and pressed his ear against the door. It sounded like a girl, probably a young teenager at the most. Normally, Riku wouldn't consider someone like that a threat, but if she was in a place like this, she couldn't be a normal person. With that in mind, Riku kicked down the door.

Whatever he was expecting, it was not for the inhabitant to let out a squeak and hide behind a chair. Riku had to sweatdrop at that and lowered his Keyblade. "You gotta be kidding me." A pair of brown eyes peeked out from behind the chair. Whoever this was, she didn't seem like she could hurt a fly.

"You're…" The girl cautiously came out from behind the chair, and Riku's mouth dropped open.

"Snow White? !"

Snow White (Because that's the only person it could be.) looked around and looked at him in confusion. "I'm sorry, but I don't see anything white…"

Riku would've pointed out he was talking about her if he hadn't realized that she was wearing the same coat that Kairi had been wearing when he'd finally found her. "Where did you get that coat?"

Snow White blinked as she glanced at her clothing. "Well, that's a strange thing to ask about. Although, now that I think about it, I don't remember having any other clothes…"

"What? But you-No, never mind. Why is that the only thing you have to wear?"

"That's just what everybody in the Organization wears," explained Snow White. "It's supposed to protect us somehow, but the explanation was rather complicated."

"Is there a girl named Kairi in this Organization?"

Snow White frowned. "No, but…" Snow White thought for a moment. "I think it has all the right letters," she muttered "…Is Kairi about so high?" She held her hand up to about her shoulder height. "Has blue eyes? Red hair that she wears over her shoulder?"

Riku nodded, his hope rising. "Yeah, that's her."

"She goes by Raxkii now. It's got all the letters for Kairi though. Does that mean you're Riku?"

Riku nodded with relief. "Yeah, is Kairi okay? Why did she run off when I saw her?"

Snow White's eyes widened. "You actually saw her?" Riku nodded. "That means the rumors-How are you still alive?"

Riku blinked. "What?"

"It's no secret among the Organization…Raxkii feels nothing but contempt for you. Most of us believed that she would kill you if the two of you ever met!"

Riku's heart dropped. "Why would she want to do that? We're best friends."

Snow White gave him a pointed look. "You were also best friends with Sora, who you killed."

Riku scowled. "That's different. He had it coming."

"I'm sure that Raxkii feels the same about you."

"Why? I didn't replace her."

Snow White sighed. "Marluxia wasn't kidding about you when he said you were close-minded."

Riku blinked in confusion. "Who?"

"Uh, that's not important…I need to go and turn in my report for the day." She raised her hand but paused. "Oh, wait a minute…" Several vines shot out of the ground and wrapped tightly around Riku, effectively immobilizing him.

I know, you wouldn't expect Riku to normally fall for this, but last time he saw Snow White, she had absolutely no fighting abilities and had not only been captured but encased in some kind of crystal. Besides, even in what looked like a cult uniform, Snow White seems completely harmless.

Now, vines are not a problem for Riku since he has a bladed weapon and a fire-type spell. Still, it took him long enough to get out of the vines that Snow White had disappeared through a dark portal by the time he'd freed himself. He quickly tried to reopen it and ran through the resulting portal.

The portal led to some sort of swamp with what looked like a half-submerged riverboat in the distance. Riku punched a nearby tree out of frustration. "Damn it!"

As for Snow White, she'd walked out into the Gray Room right in front of Saïx. "I'm back."

"You're a bit early," noted Saïx, handing her the report form. "Something happen?"

"I had to run away. I'm okay though…"

Saïx raised an eyebrow at her explanation but simply nodded. "Just explain in your report."

Snow White nodded and headed over to a couch where Lexla was working on filling out her report. Her writing skills weren't very good. They were better than when she first joined, but still the worst out of all the members'.

"Good evening Lexla."

"Hello Sxwon." Lexla frowned. "Do you use 'were' or 'was' with Heartless?"

"Were. I ran into Riku today."

Lexla blinked at that out of the blue comment. "Did he really run into Raxkii before?" Sxwon nodded. Lexla snorted. "He's lucky Zexion and Lixcea were there. Raxkii would have torn him apart otherwise."

Sxwon frowned. "Is it just me or has Raxkii become…unstable?"

"Trust me. You're not the only one who thinks that."

*Scene Change*

"I'm bored," complained Raven.

Hana sighed. "That's the fifth time you've said that today!"

"We've been stuck here for two weeks! And all we've been doing is training!"

Yes, they've been there for two weeks, but because nothing interesting had happened to them in that time, I thought it would be in everyone's best interests to skip those two weeks.

"We have been fighting monsters," pointed out Hana. "You're still getting to fight regularly."

Raven's head dropped. "It's just not the same…Scarlett won't even teach me any more spells."

Scarlett had taught Raven Water, but had refused to teach him anything else. She claimed this was because the next spell was a bit more complicated and that she wanted them to build up their magic powers first.

Raven wasn't the only one who had learned new spells. Kaze had finally worked out the kinks in Shell and was then taught Esuna, which Scarlett claimed could cure poison, blindness, sleep, confusion, and other things that none of them thought could actually happen in a fight.

They're young; they'll learn.

The real trick was teaching these spells to the other two members of the quartet. Once Hana had fully recovered, she'd learned them fairly easily. Sora was another story altogether. He'd managed to learn how to dismiss Odette, but she still would occasionally pop up without warning. Since he was still working on that, he hadn't tried working on any of the new spells yet.

He'd also discovered that he couldn't use the other Keyblade he had for some reason. After a couple of hours of wondering about this, Sora decided that as soon as he got the hang of having a summon, it wouldn't matter anyway and hadn't worried about it since.

Those are the most interesting things that happened over the two weeks. Sephiroth hadn't even tried to make contact again. You see why I decided to skip what they did for these two weeks?

Hana frowned and tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Maybe you like the adrenaline rush? I wonder if we can find something else that can do that…"

Hana promptly glanced around to see if she could find anything that might be able to distract Raven for a few minutes. She'd suggest fighting some Heartless, but Scarlett tended to give them time limits when they went shopping so that was out.

It was by chance that Hana spotted the stand. It had a couple of men behind it, a sign with some colors and words next to them, and what looked like some sort of wooden wheel. Her curiosity was piqued. "Hey, let's go check that out."

Raven followed her line of sight and raised an eyebrow. "Why? It doesn't look like they're selling anything."

"It looks interesting. Besides, we've got a couple of extra minutes."

Raven didn't get a chance to protest as Hana dragged him over. He scowled as he glanced over the set up. "So what's this supposed to be?'

"It's a raffle."

"Or a lottery."

"Or whatever you prefer to call a game of chance."

"You pay a fee, and you get a chance to win one of various prizes."

"Grand prize is six tickets to Wonderland!"

Raven glanced at the board and noticed that a gold patch of paint was next to 'Six tickets to Wonderland.' Other prizes included 200 munny, a potion, an ether, and a synthesis material (Not that Raven knew what that meant.). He noticed that next to the white patch was written 'no prize.'

Considering that it cost 20 munny to play, he was going to assume that most of whatever items they used were white.

"I think that sounds kind of fun," said Hana, showing that she was thinking in an entirely different direction compared to Raven. "Why don't we play a round?"

Raven scowled. "No way! I worked hard to earn my munny! I'm not wasting it on the off chance I get a free potion!"

Hana shrugged. "Well, I think I'll play a game." She turned back to the table and slapped her munny on the table.

Raven scoffed as the men started turning the wheel. "Don't come running to me when you lose your munny."

"It's no big deal. I wasn't planning on spending it on anything in particular anyway."

At that moment, a ball fell out of the hole on the wheel. A golden ball. "We have a winner!"

Hana let out a happy squeal as Raven stared at the winning ball.

How the fuck had Hana managed to pull that off?

When they got back to the Coliseum, Hana was practically beaming, which caught everyone's attention. "Guess what?"

"You remembered something about your past?" suggested Scarlett.

Sora perked up. "You ran into Mulan?" She'd been avoiding the group since the tournament due to embarrassment.

Kaze looked the two over. "Did you get Raven to agree to something he didn't want to do? That'd be pretty impressive."

Hana shook her head at all three of the guesses. "I won tickets to Wonderland!"

That simply made Kaze and Sora blink as that meant nothing to them. Scarlett instantly got interested though. "Oh, did you take part in a raffle? There's almost always one going on. It's rare for someone to win the tickets though…"

"What's Wonderland anyway?" asked Raven. "Some sort of amusement park or something?"

"It's a world."

That cheered Raven up. "Really? Can we go?"

Scarlett paused in thought for a moment while the four teens looked at her hopefully. "Yes, I believe that would be all right." They let out a cheer, but Scarlett raised a hand to silence them. "Hold on. Let me get a look at those tickets." Hana nodded and dug out the tickets from her pocket. Scarlett looked them over and frowned. "I thought so."

Hana frowned worriedly. "Is something wrong with them?"

Scarlett shook her head. "No, it's just that they're one way tickets. You'll have to pay for the ride back if you decide to use them." She handed the tickets back to Hana. "Other than that, I don't think there'd be any problems unless Odette decided to appear while you were in the gummi ship."

As if to punctuate that, Odette appeared behind Sora. Said brunette laughed nervously. "We've been getting better at that."

"I'm not sure if they'd be good for dogs either." Scarlett gave Pluto a pointed look. Pluto seemed to ignore it in favor of scratching himself. "You'll have to ask the Cid who taxis you there."

Kaze raised a hand. "I thought you didn't want us running off to any other worlds until we were prepared?"

"Well, most of them can be pretty dangerous either due to the Heartless or the terrain. Wonderland is a very big exception to this. It still has Heartless, but they're pretty basic and easy to deal with. There used to be a boss there, but it was killed permanently somehow."

"Sounds boring," muttered Raven.

Scarlett chuckled. "That's just because you haven't seen it. That world's actually a popular vacation spot due to the fairly weak Heartless and its whimsical nature."

"Whimsical?"

"Yeah, the normal laws of reality don't seem to apply there. How to describe it…Well, certain foods can make you bigger or smaller, several inanimate objects are actually alive, and the fauna are rather…unique. Really, the only thing you need to look out for is the Queen of Hearts. She has a tendency to chop off people's heads and ask questions later."

That made the four gulp.

"As long as you avoid her and her card soldiers though, it should be perfectly safe for you to go."

Sora dismissed Odette and walked over. "How many of those did you get?"

Hana smiled. "I got six, one for each of us."

Scarlett sighed. "While, I would love to go with you, I still have my job here. Normally, I could get someone to substitute for me, but with the situation in the Chesapeake…"

"Oh…" Hana visibly deflated. "Then what should I do with the extra one?"

Raven smirked. "I got an idea." He walked over to Sora and whispered something into the brunette's ear that made him grin.

Kaze groaned. "What are you two planning?"

"Nothing. Meet us at the gummi garage." And then the two boys ran off.

Kaze raised an eyebrow. "Should we be worried?"

Scarlett shrugged. "Possibly, but I doubt they're planning on anything more than slightly mischievous. I'm sure you'll find out what they decided to do when they arrive at the garage."

The two looked at the Compilation to see what they should expect to run into while at Wonderland. Like Scarlett said, it appeared that the Heartless would be easily dealt with. Since they didn't know where Sora and Raven had run off to, they headed over to the garage as soon as they were done.

The Cid at the garage looked considerably more normal than the others they'd run into so far. He had brown hair, glasses, a white button up shirt, a red sweater vest, a blue tie, khaki pants, and black dress pants. He was also somewhat chubby, but not overly so. He was talking to a woman with long black hair, an ankle-length gray dress with slightly lighter sleeves, and black shoes. The Cid paused when he noticed the two kids and a dog. He gave them a friendly smile. "Well, hello there. Traveling to another world today?"

Hana smiled and nodded. "Yep! I won a raffle."

"Congratulations! I am Cid Kramer, and this is my wife Edea."

The woman smiled. "A pleasure, I'm sure." She shifted a bit as she looked behind the three. "Those tickets are won in sets of six. Where are your friends?"

Kaze shrugged. "They ran off and said they'd meet us here."

"Can we use one of these tickets for Pluto or do we have to pay for him too?" asked Hana. "We have the munny for it, but there's no one else to take with us."

Cid smiled and scratched Pluto's ears. "I don't have any problem with it." He straightened. "Where are the tickets to? The usual destination is Wonderland."

"That's where to," confirmed Hana.

At that point, there was the sound of something being knocked over outside, catching everyone's attention. A second later, Sora and Raven appeared, draggin a flustered Mulan behind them.

"Okay, we got six people," said Raven, as if he hadn't just forced the reluctant young woman into the garage.

"But-I don't want to intrude!"

Sora shrugged. "We have an extra ticket anyway. Besides, you've been avoiding us for some reason…"

Mulan blushed and mumbled a response that was two quiet for anyone to understand.

"We don't really know anyone else to bring along except for Scarlett," pointed out Kaze. "She had to stay because of her job though."

"Well, I hope you work out your differences," offered Cid. "When would be the best time for you to leave?"

Raven shrugged. "Now's good."

"Yeah," agreed Sora. The two quickly pulled Mulan into the gummi ship.

"Should we stop them?" asked Kaze.

Hana sighed. "No, Mulan needs to learn to stand up for herself somehow."

Edea coughed. "Well, if that's everything, then I suggest we leave before your friend tries to escape."

Kaze gave the two adults a disbelieving look. "You seem oddly compliant with this."

"I used to run an orphanage," explained Edea.

"And I was the equivalent of the principle at a school for SeeD mercenaries," continued Cid. "You get a feel for these things with that much experience dealing with kids."

Kaze and Hana weren't sure if they should be relieved that the two understood or insulted that they had just been called kids. They settled for thanking him and getting on the gummi ship with the rest of the party.

**Chapter end**

Mulan joined the party!...Possibly against her will…

Yes, the only person who is aware that Sora is still alive is Sephiroth. He would find out somehow even if everyone else was clueless for a million years. He knows everything that can be used to hurt Cloud or humanity in general.


	13. A Very Merry Unbirthday!

I am so sorry that I haven't updated lately. It's my last semester of college, and I even had to do some studying/research to do over my winter break for my honors thesis. I'm also experiencing some writer's block concerning my two stories. Hopefully, once all my projects are over and done with I'll be able to focus on this a bit more.

I am going to have fun with this arc, partly because it's Wonderland and partly because of what I have planned.

I still don't own anything.

**Chapter Start!**

"We're here!" announced Cid. The quartet immediately rushed to the window to look at the world.

It was covered with a pink and red checkerboard pattern with some fancy hedges and a cottage.

"It doesn't look like much," muttered Raven.

Edea chuckled. "It gets more interesting when you actually set foot on it."

"Where do we disembark?" asked Kaze.

"We don't know. Whenever a passenger leaves the gummi ship, the end up in a totally random location," explained Cid. "Which reminds me." Cid quickly handed out life jackets to everyone, even Pluto, although he made it obvious that he didn't like the jacket. "There is some sort of body of water that people occasionally land in. It can be dangerous if you're wearing a lot of heavy clothes."

"If the drop off point is random, then where is the emergency pick-up point?" asked Mulan.

"It's in the Queen of Hearts' court for some reason," said Edea with a displeased look.

"Isn't that the lady who cuts off people's heads?" asked Hana.

"Yes. The Cids reasoned that this was the place people were most likely to need an emergency pick-up."

"I thought it made sense," said Cid, revealing he was one of the Cids who'd supported this decision. "Now, due to the nature of this world, the gummi ship can't land on the world. We'll have to beam you off. Have you ever seen Star Trek?" Everyone shook their heads. "Oh, pity. The transport is almost exactly the same. Well, stand still for a moment, and don't panic at any odd sensations. They're perfectly normal." Then he walked over to a big red button on the wall and pressed it.

The effect was instantaneous. They immediately felt lightheaded and like they were weightless. Their vision also faded out for a few seconds before fading back in as the feeling of weightlessness faded. They were still slightly lightheaded though so it took them a few moments to realize they were at the top of a very tall tree in the middle of a forest.

They instantly froze up, including Pluto. "How are we supposed to get down from here?" asked Mulan.

"Oh!" Sora summoned his Keyblade and Odette. "Can you fly us down to the ground?" Odette made a sort of nodding motion.

Of course, there was only room for one person, so they had to go down one at a time. That meant Odette had to make six trips. At least no Heartless showed up where Odette decided to drop them off.

"Thanks a bunch Odette. I really owe you." Sora gave Odette a scratch on her ruff before dismissing her. He had to conserve his magic after all.

"Do we have to keep wearing these life jackets?" asked Raven, trying to readjust his. "It's really uncomfortable." Then the life jacket suddenly turned into a yellow arm band. "What the fuck? How'd I do that?"

"Maybe there's a button or something," suggested Kaze. "Look and see if you can find anything that will do that."

"Why didn't Cid mention this before he dropped us off?" wondered Mulan, as she took off her life jacket and started looking it over.

"Maybe these items are used on a regular basis," suggested Hana. "If that's the case, he might've expected us to know how to use it."

Eventually, they found a button on the inside of the jacket that caused it to shrink down to the band. Everyone ended up with a band on their arm, except for Mulan and Pluto. Since Mulan had been holding her life jacket when she took it off, hers was on her wrist. Pluto's was on top of his collar.

"Wow, this place is huge!" said Sora as he darted back and forth between several mushrooms that were taller than him. "It's like we've been minimized!"

Kaze tapped a large lily pad. "I guess that this is what Scarlett meant by whimsical."

Pluto barked at a large flower. It promptly whapped him on the nose. Pluto back peddled with a loud yelp. "Don't even think about it!"

Mulan's eyes bugged out. "The flowers talk?"

"Hello!" said Hana.

"If you give me a potion, I'll make you bigger." For some reason, the flower's offer caused Raven to burst out laughing

After Raven recovered from his laughing fit, they explored the rest of the forest. Besides the Heartless and talking flowers, there was also some interesting wildlife. What looked like a walking pair of glasses had placed themselves on Hana's face within the first few minutes of exploring the forest. She didn't even notice it was there until she happened to look at a bird that had a mirror for a face.

They discovered another amusing species when Sora saw a loaf of bread on a leaf and reached out to grab it. It then flew off as a bunch of insects similar to butterflies except their wings were made of bread and butter instead of the regular material.

One of the most shocking came when Mulan suddenly backed into a birdcage. This birdcage was a bird with a cage for a body that contained two smaller, seemingly normal birds inside. When Mulan backed into the cage, the door was jarred open and the two birds flew out. The larger bird immediately ran after them and did not stop until it had swallowed them and they were back in the cage.

That had just been bizarre.

On a side note, the umbrella vultures…Not nearly as pleasant as they first appeared.

After a couple of hours of exploring the forest, even Mulan had a smile on her face.

"See? This place is fun!" said Sora.

"Yeah, it's a nice change of pace," agreed Mulan.

Pluto suddenly ran up with something in his mouth covered in slobber. The group did a quick janken competition to decide who was going to have to take it. Hana lost and was forced to retrieve the glowing shard of…something from Pluto's mouth. She quickly wiped it off on one of the over-sized blades of grass. "Where does he find this stuff?"

"And what is all this crap anyway?" asked Raven.

Mulan gave him a surprised look. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"These are synthesis items." Mulan took the item Hana was holding and placed it into her sword sheath, which had been spelled to contain all sorts of stuff apparently. "Moogles used them to make new items that you can actually use. You mostly can find Heartless carrying them for some reason."

"What's a moogle?" asked Kaze.

"Uh…It's sort of like a living white stuffed animal with a big red nose, bat wings, and some sort of red ball growing out of their head."

The quartet tried to imagine this. What they got looked nothing like a moogle, but they wouldn't realize that for a while.

"Hey, there's a sign here," said Sora, pointing up at a two wooden arrows nailed to a post. One had 'Mad Hatter' written on it, and the other had 'March Hare' written on it. "What's a march hare?"

"I think you mean who."

"Why would you-" Wait. "Who said that?"

A set of grinning teeth suddenly appeared in front of Sora. He leapt back with a shout as everyone else got into a fighting position and Odette appeared.

"The March Hare would be insulted if you called him a what instead of a who."

"Okay, the talking set of teeth is sort of creepy," conceded Raven. A pair of eyeballs suddenly appeared above the teeth. "Now it's just getting freaky."

"I myself have no qualms with being referred to as a what or a who or a where or a why." And now the teeth and eyes were in a purple striped cat head that was tilting back and forth, still grinning at them. "Which do you prefer?"

"Uh, who?" Hana glanced at Pluto, who seemed to have been frightened by the talking cat head. "I don't think Pluto actually cares which you use."

"I did not know cats could grin like that," said Mulan, staring at the cat in shock.

"Of course, I am a Cheshire Cat."

"I guess that makes sense," agree Kaze. It should be noted that since he was unfamiliar with the term, Kaze thought the cat said 'Jester Cat.' That's why he figured it made sense.

"So, who's the March Hare?" asked Sora.

"He's the one who the Mad Hatter has tea with," said the cat, as if that explained everything. "Of course, they haven't had tea lately. That doesn't stop them from enjoying the occasional tea party though."

Kaze sweatdropped. "I don't get it."

The cat chuckled. "Of course you don't. It's their tea party."

"Which way do you recommend?" asked Sora.

"The only way."

"I think he means directionally," said Hana with a sweatdrop.

"I certainly don't know which way you want to take."

Sora evidently decided he wanted to go to the March Hare's house as he suddenly decided to run down that path. The others had to follow him or risk losing him in the confusing place.

It was a fun place, but it was difficult to keep track of landmarks. They had yet to run across anything that looks familiar.

When they caught up to Sora he was staring at a cottage that appeared to have rabbit ears and a courtyard with a long table, chairs, and various tea pots and tea foods. There was some sort of music coming from the table.

"Is that singing?" Kaze asked dubiously.

"I thought the talking cat said that they didn't have tea parties anymore," muttered Raven. Just looking at the layout, he knew he wouldn't like it.

"Those pastries look good though," said Hana.

Sora brightened. "Fresh food would be nice!" Then he hurried over to the table and stopped with wide eyes. There were two people already sitting at the table.

The more noticeable one was a young girl that was probably younger than them. She had blonde hair, was wearing a crazy looking green and orange top hat with hat pins and cards, and she was staring at a tea pot with a vacant look on her face.

The other man had a goatee, short blond hair, and several piercings in his ears. He was humming the music and looking at some playing cards.

Both were wearing black hooded cloaks.

The man noticed them just as the others caught up to Sora. He blinked and stepped onto the table, walking up to the head of the table and bending down to Sora's eye level. "Do you have any idea how late you are?"

"Huh?"

"Everyone has been waiting for you for the longest time. Do you have any idea how inconsiderate it is to be so very late?"

"Uh, sorry?"

"Well, you're here now." The man grabbed Sora and pushed him into a chair. "Now, grab a seat and pour yourself some tea. We don't have all day."

That sounded…confusing. Everyone else decided to find a seat. The girl with the hat suddenly stood up, walked over to Hana, and sat in her lap. Hana made a choked sound. "What is she doing? !"

The man gave her a look. "Isn't it obvious? She's decided she wants to sit on you instead of a chair. What you should be asking is why."

Raven snickered. "Yeah, he's right. It's obvious."

Hana gave Raven a scathing look before returning her attention to the girl sitting on her lap. "Why are you sitting on me?"

"You are a sea of stars awash in a world of nothingness and shadows."

An awkward silence followed that. "Okay, I have to admit I have no idea what the bloody hell that means," said the British man before pouring himself some more tea.

"Is she the Mad Hatter?" asked Kaze. She had a hat, and that statement had been, well, mad.

The man shook his head. "No, she's Lixcea. That's the Mad Hatter." The man gestured at a portrait at the end of the table of a short goofy looking old man in a green top hat and a brown rabbit in a suit. "Lixcea couldn't make a hat to save her life."

"I don't need a hat. I already have one."

The man chuckled. "What if someone else wants a hat?"

"Why would they want a hat? None of their hair would fit under one."

That made the man burst out laughing for some reason. When he finally recovered he apparently had decided to act like nothing had happened and held out a plate to Mulan. "Tart?"

"Uh, no thank you. These sweets are too sweet for me."

The man flipped the plate over, revealing an unfamiliar food. "Sweet bun?"

Mulan's eyes bugged out. "But-How did-When-That shouldn't be possible!"

"My dear, this is Wonderland. Surely you've already seen something that shouldn't be possible." Everyone had to nod in concession to that. "It might help if you try to apply cartoon logic to this place."

"What logic?"

"Moving pictures on the telly. Now, do you want a sweet bun or not?" Mulan nodded, but just as she reached for one, the man dropped the plate and stood up. "Move to the left!" The two odd blondes then forced everyone to move one seat to the left before sitting back down in their new seats, except for Lixcea. She decided to continue sitting on Hana's lap. "So am I correct in the assumption you are not from Wonderland?"

"Yeah," agreed Kaze.

"What brings you here?"

"I won some tickets," explained Hana.

Lixcea suddenly held up the teapot she was holding. "Tea?"

"Oh, sure." Hana held up the tea cup she was currently holding. Instead of pouring tea into it, Lixcea removed the top of the tea pot, held it upside down, and shook a sleeping mouse (in clothes thankfully) into the cup. Hana turned green.

"Oh, I apologize." He took the pot and the cup. After stuffing the mouse into a card (They weren't sure how that worked.), he tossed the cup and pot behind him, allowing them to shatter on the ground. "I thought I'd taken the dormouse away from her."

"Is that her pet?" Mulan asked hopefully.

"No, it lives here." The visitors suddenly gave everything on the table a nervous look. The man either didn't notice or didn't care. "Lixcea always manages to find it when we come by. I'm not sure how she managed to get it out of my cards though. I'm supposed to be the only one who can let him out."

Kaze pushed his plate away. "I'm not hungry anymore." Everyone muttered an agreement as they pushed their plates and cups away.

"But it's your unbirthday," said Lixcea.

"Our what?"

"Your unbirthday is the day your birthday isn't," explained Luxord.

"Wouldn't that be practically every day?" asked Sora.

Lixcea visibly brightened. "Merry unbirthdays!" She turned to the blond man. "Can we have a party? Please, please, please?"

"Hm…" The man took out a card and looked at it for a moment. "I'd say we have time."

"Hooray!"

"Uh, that's not necessary-"

The man waved Mulan off. "No, no, we insist. You don't have an unbirthday every day."

Raven suddenly exploded. "It's just a normal day! There's nothing to celebrate! Stop acting like it's so special!" The man continued to look at his cards while Lixcea had taken off her hat and was digging around in it. "Are you nut jobs listening? !"

The man looked up with a frown on his face. "Here now! There's no need for names just because we think a little differently from you."

"A little? ! You keep a mouse in a teapot!"

"It's a dormouse," interjected Lixcea.

The man nodded. "Big difference." He suddenly pulled out a card. "Found it! You ready Lixcea?" Said girl nodded excitedly. "Okay, first game!"

Sora blinked. "Game?"

"You have to find Lixcea. It's similar to hide-and-seek except you will be given handicaps."

Kaze paled. "Handicaps?"

Raven raised an eyebrow. "What sort of handicaps?"

The man just tossed the card into the air, causing it to let out a bright flash of light. Everyone let out a pained shout except the man who threw the card in the first place.

"You crazy son of a bitch!" shouted Raven as he shot up rubbing at his eyes. He frowned when he realized the man was gone, along with the crazy blonde. "Where'd they go?"

Hana let out a sigh of relief as she got out of her chair and dusted herself off. Then she froze and her hands flew up to her neck.

"That was kind of freaky," said Sora, stumbling as he also stood up. "I think my legs fell asleep…"

Mulan just let out a sigh of relief. "At least they're gone."

"Seriously, where'd they go?" Raven looked around for a moment before his gaze landed on Kaze. "What's with you?"

Kaze hadn't moved, was gripping his chair like his life depended on it, looked paler than Raven, and his eyes had gone wide. Raven frowned. "Kaze? You hear me?"

"I can't see."

"Come again?"

"I can't see!"

That got everyone's attention. "What do you mean you can't see?" asked Sora, trying to get around to Kaze. He fell flat on his face before he could take a step though.

"Seriously, speak up," said Raven. "I can't hear a word you're saying."

"Oh dear…" Mulan looked over at Hana, who was making all sorts of hand gestures. "Hana…Please tell me you're okay." Hana gave her an angry look and gestured at her mouth while mouthing something. What she was trying to say, no one could say since they couldn't read lips. "I think Hana's gone mute."

"What? !" Sora tried to get over to Hana this time, but still managed to fall on his face before he even took a step.

"Why is Sora being an idiot?" asked Raven.

"Okay, Kaze is blind, Hana's mute, I'm not sure what's wrong with Sora…"

"Was that picture like that before?" asked Raven, pointing at the picture at the end of the table. The two in the picture now looked terrified and were clutching each other in terror.

Kaze growled. "Raven! Will you focus! There is something wrong with us!"

Well, Raven was now staring at Kaze in shock. "Kaze! No words are coming out of your mouth!"

Sora groaned as he hoisted himself up next to the table. "Okay, who else thinks that Raven is deaf?"

"No words are coming out of Sora's mouth!"

Both Mulan and Kaze muttered an agreement while Hana just nodded and raised her hand. "Mulan, are you okay?" asked Kaze.

"Um…" Mulan quickly checked herself over. "I think so."

"Is Pluto okay?" asked Sora.

Everyone looked over at Pluto. He was whimpering and pawing at his nose, but other than that, he seemed okay.

"Do any of you guys know Esuna?" asked Mulan.

"Scarlett taught it to Hana and Kaze before we left," said Sora. "What's that got to do with this?"

"Esuna can cure status problems like blindness and silence."

"Oh my Shiva! I've gone deaf!"

That got a groan from everyone else who was capable of it. "Can one of you guys please use Esuna on him?" asked Sora.

"I can't aim," deadpanned Kaze.

Hana summoned her Keyblade and pointed it at Kaze. Nothing happened. She shook it a couple of times. Still nothing.

Raven gave Hana a confused look. "Hana, what are you doing?" Hana bit her lip and looked at Mulan.

"Silence typically makes it so you can't cast spells," explained Mulan. "I figured you'd know that…"

"You mean I have to cast the spell?" asked Kaze in disbelief.

"Please?" asked Sora. Kaze sighed and stood up, summoning his Keyblade. "Don't blame me if I run out of magic before I can hit anything. Now, where is Hana?"

Hana tapped the table in front of her. "She's there."

Kaze took a deep breath. "Here goes nothing." He cast Esuna, but it appeared several feet in front of Hana.

"You need to go a bit further back," said Sora.

The next Esuna was even further in front of Hana.

"I think Sora meant in the other direction."

"What's Kaze doing?" whispered Raven.

The next Esuna was actually behind Hana. "Not so far back."

The next Esuna was right next to Hana. "A little to the left."

"You're trying to hit Hana? What are you blind? Wait…Oh. Uh, never mind."

The next Esuna was further to the side. "Your other left."

The next Esuna was finally close enough to Hana that it should have had an effect. "Well?" asked Mulan hopefully.

Hana moved her mouth a few times before sighing and shaking her head.

"It didn't work Kaze," said Sora. Kaze groaned.

Raven suddenly slammed his fist into an open palm. "I got it! We can use that Esuna spell!"

Kaze twitched and threw his Keyblade at Raven with an angry yell. Surprisingly it actually hit Raven in the face. Raven let out a pained yelp and grabbed at his now bloody nose. "Ow! I thought you were supposed to be blind!"

"Anyone have any idea how to deal with this?" asked Kaze.

"Pluto can be your seeing eye dog!" proclaimed Sora, pointing at the dog. Well, sort of. He ended up pointing a couple of feet to the left, but corrected himself as soon as he saw it. "We just need a leash or something."

"Don't those need training?"

"Does this mean we have to play that stupid hide-and-seek game?" asked Raven. "I know we didn't agree to it, but it's the only thing I can think of to get back to normal."

Everyone looked at Raven in surprise before nodding. "Well, it's something," said Sora. "It's definitely the only lead we have."

"Where do you think she might be hiding?" asked Mulan.

"If I were her, I'd hide somewhere away from Heartless," said Kaze.

Hana nodded in agreement as Raven suddenly started crawling under the table. "You have a point," agreed Sora. "She looked pretty harmless." Raven suddenly started climbing up the hedges. "Raven! Oh great, how do I get his attention?"

"Throw something at him," deadpanned Kaze.

It wasn't the best idea, but shouting at Raven wasn't going to work so Sora fumbled for a tea cup and threw it at Raven.

"Ow! What was that for? !"

"I don't think she'd be hiding in the hedges."

"…I can't hear a thing you're saying."

Kaze sighed. "This could take a while…"

**Chapter End!**

I seriously thought that it was Jester Cat until the first time I saw it written down. Little known fact, Cheshire is a region in England. They made cats out of cheese with big smiles, and cut off the cheese starting at the tail, eventually leaving only the head. Actually explains a couple of things.

Some inspiration was taken from Jackie Chan Adventures. They've each lost a sense. Some are more obvious than others.


	14. A Very Odd Game of Hide and Seek

And here's Chapter 14! This one got out pretty quickly compared to the other chapters. That's a bit surprising considering my workload the past couple of weeks.

Anyway, the chapter ended up shorter than I previously thought, but it's hard writing about these characters when they are suffering from perception problems. It was fun, but it seemed monotonous so I decided to put an end to it this chapter.

So, I still only own the plot of this story, mostly.

*Chapter Start!*

"I think this is as good as it's going to get," muttered Mulan, wondering how she'd ended up having to take care of everyone else.

Raven was okay on his own, but Kaze and Sora were not. For now, Kaze was holding onto Pluto (Who seemed rather confused and sad for some reason.) via a makeshift leash made out of strips of tablecloth. Sora was being supported by Hana since he kept stumbling, tripping, hitting stuff, and basically being a super klutz.

"Can we get going already?" asked Raven. "This is as good as we can get it, and it's getting boring…" Everyone else let out a groan. It turned out Raven's sense of hearing was necessary to prevent him from getting on everyone's nerves.

"So, where do you think that weird girl is hiding?" asked Kaze.

Hana made some gesturing motions towards Pluto.

"I think we need something of hers for Pluto to track her," pointed out Sora. Somehow, he was able to understand what Hana's gestures meant. It was why it had been decided to stick those two together.

"I hope she isn't hiding in that forest," muttered Kaze.

"I don't think she went that way," said Sora. The path leading to the forest seemed to have shifted for some reason. It now went up a tree. There wasn't any visible way to return to the forest.

Raven sighed. "Seriously. If we're not going anytime soon, I'm gonna go check out that house with the rabbit ears." Raven walked over to the house, opened the door, walked in, and fell up with a loud shout. Odette randomly appeared while the others stared at the house in shock…

"Okay, why did Raven shout like that?" asked Kaze.

"He went inside the house and fell…up," said Mulan, understandably shocked.

"We should probably check that out," said Sora. He glanced at Odette. "Sorry, but you won't fit through the door." Odette nodded and disappeared.

Sora and Hana poked their heads through the door and saw Raven sitting on the ceiling rubbing his head. "Uh, Raven?" Sora tossed his Keyblade up towards Raven to get the other's attention.

"Watch your first step! The gravity in this room is reversed or something!" Raven got up and walked over to a nearby light fixture. That was when Heartless appeared around him. "Oh crap."

"Odette!" Said summon appeared in the house, already upside-down. "Watch his back!" Odette made a sort of nodding motion and flew over to Raven, using several spells to destroy any Heartless that were at Raven's back. It didn't take even a minute to destroy the Heartless that had appeared around Raven.

"Okay, what happened?" asked Kaze.

"Some Heartless appeared around Raven," explained Mulan, chewing on her lip. "I don't think it's going to be safe for us to wander around like this."

Hana rolled her eyes and looked at Raven, who had managed to get ambushed again. Sora nodded in agreement. "Hana's right, we won't be able to explain that to Raven, and he's not going to stop looking."

"Are you guys coming up here or not? !"

"See?"

Kaze sighed. "Fine, but considering I can't see, I think you should give me a wide berth, just in case."

"I guess I'll be getting plenty of practice summoning Odette…" mused Sora.

Their landing was just as messy as Raven's.

"Okay, I don't see this Lixcea chick anywhere." Raven looked around. "I have no idea how to get out of here either…" The group groaned.

"We better not be stuck in here," muttered Kaze, feeling his way along the wall…Only to fall through it with a shout and dragging Pluto after him with a loud yelp.

"Kaze!" The group, minus Raven hurried over to where Kaze had disappeared.

"Huh? Hey, where'd Kaze and Pluto go?" asked Raven as he followed the others to the spot. "Hey!" He pushed open a hatch. "You guys found the way out! Sweet!" And then he jumped through before anyone could stop him.

"He's going to get himself killed at this rate!" complained Mulan.

Sora and Hana's eyes widened. "Crap! You're right! We have to go help them!" Then Sora and Hana jumped through as well. Mulan looked around, sighed, and carefully walked through the hatch.

It turned out the hatch dropped them in a room with giant furniture in it. As if that wasn't odd enough, they were standing on one of the walls instead of the actual floor. Some Heartless had already appeared and were attacking Raven and Kaze. Raven was doing well for the most part. Kaze was not. Kaze was mainly flailing his Keyblade about in whatever direction Pluto was growling. He's apparently put up a Barrier and Shell though, so he wasn't completely defenseless.

Sora and Hana were having a particularly tricky time. Since Hana couldn't use magic and was carrying Sora around, the most she could do was slash at any Heartless that got near to her. Sora could slash at Heartless pretty well, but he was mainly functioning as long-range support by firing off magic.

Mulan could only sigh. It was not a good sign when she was the only one who could fight at full strength. She supposed she should be glad that it was mainly smaller Heartless with only one Large Body. "How is everyone doing?"

"Fine!" shouted Kaze.

"You're on fire!" shouted Raven.

Kaze blinked. "Uh, thanks?"

"No, he means Mulan's _really_ on fire!" shouted Sora.

Mulan blinked and looked down. Her left sleeve had caught fire at some point and was happily burning away. She yelped and beat at it until Raven hit her arm with a Blizzard spell. "Aren't you supposed to stop, drop, and roll or something?"

"Are you okay?" asked Sora.

Mulan ignored him as she looked over her arm. It was a bit red, but it didn't hurt. Her sleeve was pretty much destroyed though. "I think I'm okay." She was slightly shaken, but that was understandable.

"Now that that crisis has been averted, where do we go now?" asked Raven. He jumped experimentally. "Nope." Then he ran down to where the wall met the floor and started trying to step onto the floor.

"Should we stop him?" asked Mulan? Hana shrugged.

"Are Raven and Sora trying something weird again?" asked Kaze.

"I'm still here," muttered Sora.

"Er…"

"Raven's trying to get on the floor," explained Mulan.

"Aren't we already on the floor?"

"No, we're on the wall," said Sora.

"…This world is weird…"

Hana glanced between everyone and Raven, who was still trying to get on the floor. "Yeah, I don't think that's gonna work. Let's go drag him back so we can talk about where we're supposed to go now." So, they started clumsily walking over towards Raven. However, halfway there, the two stepped on a painting of the ocean and fell in with a loud splash and a 'whoa!'

"Was that water?"

Mulan stared at the offending picture. "They fell through a picture."

"A picture?"

"It was of the ocean."

"Okay…" The two stared in the general direction of the picture. "You grab Raven. I'll go ahead and find my way to it."

"Okay." As a quick precaution, Mulan quickly activated her life jacket. She didn't know how deep the water in the painting went, and she couldn't swim with the heavy metal strapped on unless she had the floatation device on over it. Then she went over to Raven and grabbed him.

"Hey! What's-Why are you wearing that life jacket? There's no water around here." Mulan just dragged Raven over to the painting, which the two fell into.

When they surfaced, they were in a veritable ocean. Hana and Pluto were dog-paddling a few feet away. Sora and Kaze were just floating and messily dog-paddling as well as they could. "Are you guys okay?" asked Mulan.

"Gah! Where'd all this water come from?" Raven quickly activated the life preserver.

"So, did the painting lead here or something?" asked Raven. Mulan nodded. "Ugh, it's hard swimming with clothes on. Is there any land nearby?"

"Good question," said Sora. Odette suddenly appeared. "Odette, do you see any land nearby?" Odette flew up a few feet before flying off in one direction. "I think she sees something! C'mon!" Anything was better than just treading water, so they swam after the bird as best as they could.

After a few minutes, they were relieved to see land. The relief turned to confusion when they saw what was happening on the beach. A bunch of different animals (mainly birds with some lobsters and starfish) were running around in circles.

"Why are those birds and fish running around in circles?" asked Raven. "Wait. Why am I asking when I'm not even gonna be able to hear the answer?" The two girls shrugged.

Land was land, so everyone climbed up. Before they could take more than a few steps, they were accosted by the animals and dragged into their circle. Sora stumbled, fell, and had to roll out of the way to avoid being trampled. "Figures…"

"What are we doing?" asked Kaze, trying desperately not to run into anyone else.

"It's the caucus dance!"

"It looks like we're just running around in circles!" said Mulan.

"Well, it can't have a beginning or an end!"

"You're not making any sense!"

"Hey, why are we running in circles?" asked Raven.

"It's the best way to get dry of course!"

Hana glanced at Sora, who was now covered in sand and watching the others run around. She then gave the parrot that had just spoken a disbelieving look.

Pluto barked and ran over to Sora, dragging Kaze with him. "What? Are we not running anymore?"

"Pluto dragged you out," said Sora. "Can the rest of you guys get out?"

"Uh, hold on." Mulan grabbed Raven and Hana and jumped out of the circle. "Let's get out of here!"

The group instantly shot up and away towards a forest. At least no Heartless showed up while they made their escape.

"I can't believe you couldn't even run away from those guys without falling over," grumbled Raven.

Sora pouted from where he was sitting on Mulan's back. "Like I can help that…"

"Can we find somewhere to dry off our clothes?" asked Kaze. "I'm freezing."

"Really? I don't feel cold at all," said Mulan.

"I'm cold too," said Sora. Hana nodded in agreement. "We don't have any other clothes though…"

"Pluto! Stop licking me!" complained Raven. "You're supposed to be a seeing eye dog! You can't lead Kaze if you lick people!"

Hana blinked at the spectacle of licking Raven like crazy and licked her hand. She blinked and gestured to her hand. "Something weird with your hand?" asked Sora. Hana mimed licking her hand.

Since Sora was still hanging on to Mulan, Mulan licked her hand instead. "Salty? I guess that was salt water after all."

Odette chose that moment to suddenly appear. "What was that?" asked Kaze, looking around wildly.

"Just Odette." Sora paused as an idea came to him. "Hey, Odette, could you use Water on us to clean us off?"

"Wha-" Mulan was cut off when everyone was soaked by the water that spontaneously appeared over them.

"Shit! What'd you do that for? !" complained Raven. "I was almost dry!" Then Pluto shook the water out of his coat, spraying Raven. "Oh come on!"

"I'll have to agree with Raven," deadpanned Kaze. "Why did you do that?"

"To wash the salt off. Now, whip up a wind that'll dry us off!" Odette obeyed and started flapping her wings hard enough to make a strong wind. It was cold, but it did get them dry. "Thanks a lot. I have to conserve my magic, so you'll have to leave for now." Odette nodded in understanding and disappeared. "Better?"

"I think so," said Kaze. Hana nodded. Raven looked himself over in surprise.

"Did you just use a summon to wash us off?"

"What do we do now?" asked Mulan.

"Well, Lixcea could be hiding in this forest I guess," mused Sora.

They promptly spent the next few hours looking for Lixcea and fighting Heartless. It was rather difficult in their conditions.

"Okay, I'm getting hungry," complained Raven. "I don't know about you, but I'm stopping so I can eat." The rest of the group agreed and stopped to eat the food they had on them. Fortunately, most of it had survived their unexpected dip. What didn't survive was given to Pluto, who didn't seem to mind eating it.

"Do you smell something odd?" asked Kaze.

Sora paused and sniffed a couple of times. "I don't smell anything."

Raven made a face. "What is that smell? ! Is someone smoking shit or something?"

By this time, everyone could smell it. Mulan frowned. "That smells like opium…"

"Opium?"

"Uh, it a drug that…" Mulan held her head. "Makes people see things? I remember smelling it before, but I don't remember what it does exactly…"

"Where is that coming from?" muttered Raven. He immediately got up and started pushing aside various plant life in an attempt to find the source of the smell.

"I don't think he's gonna find the source of the smoke nearby," noted Mulan.

"Yeah, but this is Wonderland. Impossible things happen all the time," pointed out Sora.

Kaze snorted. "That's an understatement."

By this time, Raven had stopped forcing aside bushes and had frozen. He turned around slowly with a weird look on his face. "Hey, could you guys come over here and tell me if I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing?"

That was odd enough to get the others to come over. They were just as surprised as Raven was when they saw what he'd found. It was a blue butterfly smoking a hookah.

"So, what are we looking at?" asked Kaze.

"It's a butterfly smoking…a thing," said Sora, not knowing what the butterfly was using to smoke.

Mulan gulped. "Hello?"

The butterfly turned towards them. "Who…Are…You?" Surprisingly, When he spoke, the smoke and the letters formed 'R' and 'U.' Raven made a weird face.

"R U?"

"I'm Sora, he's Raven, he's Kaze, she's Hana, and she's Mulan," rattled off Sora. The butterfly was already ignoring him. "Who're you?"

"That is not any of your business."

"Are you?"

"But we told you who we are!" protested Sora.

"Oh! Who are you? I'm Raven, that's Sora, that's Kaze, that's Hana, and that's Mulan. Who're you?"

The butterfly sighed, colored smoke coming out of his nose. "Weren't you listening?"

"He's deaf. He can't hear anything right now," explained Kaze.

"How tiresome…"

"Have you seen a blond girl in a black cloak and a weird top hat?" asked Kaze.

"Alice is not here."

"No, the name of the girl we're looking for is named Lixcea," corrected Mulan.

"As I said, Alice is not here."

"We're not looking for Alice, we're looking for Lixcea!" protested Sora.

The butterfly slowly exhaled a stream of colored smoke. "I see no difference."

"Gah!"

Raven stared at his frustrated companions in confusion. "Wow, what'd he say to get all of you like that?"

"Then where would Alice or Lixcea or whoever hide? !" asked Kaze.

"Do I look like I would know where a girl would hide?"

"Gah!"

"Even Pluto looks annoyed now…"

"If you want to know the best hiding place, it would be much more prudent to ask the Cheshire Cat."

The group paused. That was the first useful advice they'd gotten from the butterfly since they started talking with him. They quickly backed away. "Thanks!"

"We'll leave now!"

"C'mon Raven!" Mulan grabbed Raven and dragged him back with them.

"Okay, I really have to ask what happened there when I get my hearing back…"

"You're better off not knowing!"

After getting a good distance from the hookah-smoking butterfly, they collapsed.

"I thought this place was supposed to be like an amusement park," muttered Kaze.

"Maybe we're just that unlucky," said Sora. That you are, Sora. That you are.

Mulan sighed and looked up. "Huh, the moon's already out."

Everyone looked up. There was a crescent moon out, and the sky was darker. They were going to assume that it was night, but then the moon started singing. Then it swung down and started opening and closing like a mouth while getting closer to the group. When it got closer, the Cheshire Cat's body appeared around the teeth. "Hello again."

"Hi?" Sora's eyes wandered up to the sky. Did the Cheshire Cat act as the moon of this world or something?

"Did you have fun at the tea party?"

"We ended up playing a game of hide-and-seek with a crazy girl in a black cloak and top hat."

"Oh, you mean Alice."

"No, Lixcea."

"Yes, Alice."

The group, sans Raven, sighed. Why were people assuming the two were the same person? "You seen this blonde girl in a black cloak and a weird hat?" asked Raven.

"She tends to hide in plain sight. The best place to look is in the most obvious place you can find."

"Wouldn't we have found her by now then?" asked Sora.

"The problem with obvious hiding places is that you often don't think of looking in them."

"How would we not think of looking in obvious places?" asked Kaze. "Isn't that why they're called obvious?"

"Obvious hiding places and obvious places sound the same, but they're actually not." The Cheshire Cat then disappeared behind a tree. A moment later, he popped out from behind a completely different tree. "Out of curiosity, where would you look for me?"

Mulan sweatdropped. "Is that a trick question?"

"You can teleport," said Sora. "We'd have to look everywhere for you!"

"It would be terribly difficult to hide everywhere though," said the Cheshire Cat. "It would be better if you just found where I like to hide."

"We don't know where she likes to hide," said Kaze. "And we don't have anything we can use to track her…"

"You're thinking too hard. Alice is easy to find. She hides near people she likes. If she likes you, you just need to look around wherever you are." Then the Cheshire Cat started to disappear.

Mulan's eyes widened. "Wait! Who does she like? !"

Too late. The smiling cat was already gone.

"So, did that help us at all?" asked Raven.

Kaze shook his head. "Not at all."

Hana was still thinking about what the Cheshire Cat said though. Then she got a 'Eureka' look on her face and looked around quickly. Then she started forward, waving for the others follow.

"Did you get something from that?" asked Sora. Hana nodded. "That's great! Lead the way!"

Of course it took another hour to get out of the forest. When they came out, it was near a pleasant looking cottage with a white picket fence and a carrot garden. Hana quickly handed Sora over to Mulan before crouching and staring at her shadow.

"So, where are we now?" asked Kaze.

"Near a cottage. It looks like we won't have to worry about the forest for now," said Mulan.

Raven was watching Hana poke around her shadow. "Hey, Hana, why are you messing with your shadow?"

Hana couldn't answer that so she decided to ignore him for now and continue poking around her shadow. She'd gotten an idea from the Cheshire Cat, but she wasn't exactly how to go about it. It was too bad she didn't have any of that water from the Chesapeake. That might help her.

Hey, why couldn't she try that without the water? She had magic.

So Hana closed her eyes and tried to focus on bringing out that light, even if it was only for a few seconds. She could feel the light in her heart, but it felt like it was contained in something dark. Fortunately, the cover was easily pushed to the side, and Hana was able to pull out some light.

*Flash!*

Hana opened her eyes. Everything looked the same, but now Hana was holding her Keyblade. It looked the same as usual, but there was a small pinprick of light at the end. That wasn't quite what she'd been going for. Hana sighed and absentmindedly poked her shadow with her Keyblade.

No one expected the shadow to yelp.

A small part of Hana's shadow broke off, flew away a few feet, grew a few feet, and turned into Lixcea. "You're not supposed to hit that hard when you tag!"

"Yes, we found her!" cheered Raven. "Are we back to normal yet?"

"I still can't see," deadpanned Kaze. "Can we please have our senses back?"

"We're not done with the unbirthday party yet though!" said Lixcea. "The games won't be any fun if you don't have a handicap!"

"We're playing another game?" asked Mulan.

Lixcea nodded with a grin on her face. "Yep! Next is 'Get the Vorpal Sword!'"

"I still can't hear anything," said Raven. "Give me back my hearing you crazy ditz!"

"Ready?" Lixcea whipped her hat off. "Steady?" Lixcea stuck her hand in the hat. "Go!" Lixcea pulled out her hand along with an angry looking dragon with a sword stuck in its head.

Surprisingly, the dragon was the size of the cottage. How that was possible, none of the group knew. Lixcea disappeared as soon as the dragon was completely out, which caused the angry dragon to turn its attention to the disabled group and blast them with fire.

Fortunately, everyone was able to dodge. Sora quickly summoned Odette. "We're in trouble! Let me hitch a ride!" Odette understood and let Mulan quickly put Sora on her, which went surprisingly well all things considered.

"Why is there a dragon? ! And why was there a dragon in that girl's hat? ! Who does that? !" Raven has a point, but that's not important. What was important was that Kaze was still blind.

"There's a dragon? !" Kaze was running in a way that he hoped was evasive. He figured Pluto would run away from the dragon at the very least. Kaze summoned his Keyblade and used Barrier and Shell on himself. "Wonderland has dragons? !"

Hana dodged a bout of flame as she threw her Keyblade at the dragon. The light at the tip was gone though, and Hana wasn't very strong physically. It didn't even leave a bruise.

"Odette! Blizzard and Water! And don't let up!" Odette nodded and started using the magic on the Jabberwocky. It did help with the fire, but it didn't hurt the dragon at all.

Mulan winced as she watched the fight. "There's no way I can do anything here…" Her magic was all fire based, and the Jabberwocky was obviously fire resistant. She didn't see how she'd be able to get close enough to use her sword without getting roasted. She was surprised the quartet were doing as well as they were. "This is pointless! We need to get out of here!" Mulan turned. The blond man with the piercings and goatee was standing there.

"Thinking of running away, are we?"

"Yes, there's no way we can take that on!"

"And yet, you aren't even trying to help your friends."

"They're all stronger than me! I'm sure they can take care of themselves!"

The man 'hm'ed. "You have a pretty low opinion of yourself, but even if you are that weak, wouldn't the normal reaction be to help your friends?"

"I can't help them! I can barely take care of myself."

The man nodded. "I see. Obviously, I was mistaken. I thought you were part of their group. Since that is not the case, there is no reason to leave you with them."

"What?"

"Why are none of the attacks working?" asked Sora.

"I don't know!" shouted Kaze, who was still running in whatever direction Pluto decided to run for the sake of his own survival. He couldn't cast spells since he wasn't sure who he'd hit and he did not want to hit the dragon. The most he was really capable of was throwing the Keyblade occasionally.

"It keeps healing!" complained Raven as he dodged a swipe. "How are we supposed to kill it if it keeps healing? !"

Hana got another Eureka moment as her eyes went to the sword. She distanced herself from it as she waved her arms to try and get Sora's attention. It took getting nearly flambéed to catch his attention, but she got it.

"Hana?" Sora tried to figure out what Hana was saying, failed, and decided to just see what she had to say. "Odette, get close to Hana!" Odette obeyed and flew low.

Hana promptly jumped and grabbed Odette's claws. Odette squawked and flapped up high enough for Hana to grab onto one of the tentacles on the side of the Jabberwocky's face. The Jabberwocky roared and shook his head, sending Hana flying. Fortunately, she landed on its head. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, Hana grabbed the hilt of the sword. She was just in time too; the Jabberwocky threw its head again.

Hana somehow managed to hold on to the sword, so when she was sent flying off its head, the sword went with her.

Blood spurted out of the spot where the sword had just been. It was like a geyser. The Jabberwosky let out a loud roar, collapsed, and died.

"That's how you kill one of those things? !" shouted Raven.

"Hana!" Odette landed next to Hana. Sora stumbled off and tripped badly as he tried to run over. "Are you okay? !"

Hana nodded and looked over at the sword she was still holding.

"Hana wins 'Get the Vorpal Sword'!" Everyone jumped as Lixcea reappeared. "I thought one of the boys would get it. Boys are ever so much more athletic than girls." Lixcea paused. "I guess the girls were more likely to figure it out though."

Raven's eyes widened. "I heard that!"

Kaze was also wide-eyed. "I can see!"

"Are we back to normal then?" asked Sora.

Lixcea nodded. "Oh yes, no more handicaps."

"Where's Mulan?" asked Hana.

"Luxord said she had to play a punishment game since she forfeited."

"Punishment game?"

Lixcea nodded. "Anyone who forfeits her has to play a punishment game, so Luxord took her somewhere else since she's the only one who has to play it."

"You kidnapped her? !"

Lixcea shook her head. "No, she's not a kid."

Raven hefted Lixcea up by the collar of her coat. "You bring her back right now, or so help me-"

Raven froze before he could finish his sentence. So did the rest of the quartet, Pluto, and Odette. Lixcea quickly warped out of Raven's grip. "Why is he so upset?"

Luxord shrugged from where he was leaning against the fence. "Can't say I know." The blond smirked. "However, considering how upset they look, I think it would be best to give them some time to cool off before you think about playing any games with you."

"Aw…"

"Although…" Luxord looked off in the distance for a moment. "Yes, I might as well do that now."

Lixcea tilted her head to the side. "Hm?"

"Just a little test." Luxord held out his hand and the frozen figures disappeared in a burst of light. "What do you know? It worked."

"What worked?"

"I'll explain later. Quantum physics is a very complicated subject. For now, let's go home. I have an unbirthday present for Vexen."

Lixcea clapped her hands. "Hooray!"

The two black-cloaked people then left through a portal of darkness.

*line break*

Whatever the man had done caused the quartet and Pluto to be dropped somewhere roughly. They were sore and extremely dizzy. As they were starting to regain their footing, so to speak, a several pairs of feet walked up to them.

"Well, well, well, what have we here?"

*Chapter End*

And that's the end of the chapter. Probably won't do another chapter where everyone is handicapped in some way. It was hard.

Thinking like a Wonderland resident is still hard. I was thinking of maybe having the White Rabbit and the doorknob, but I ran out of original stuff to say that sounded like something that would be heard in Wonderland.

Mulan has left the party! Sort of!

Ansem's Report

Wonderland is rather…strange as far as worlds go.

The majority of worlds obey the laws of physics for the most part with some exceptions due to the unique nature of a particular world. Various other laws of science are also consistent throughout the various worlds.

These laws do not seem to exist in Wonderland.

Truthfully, there don't seem to be many rules or laws in Wonderland. The inhabitants all seem to be insane. Or perhaps they have such an understanding of philosophy that they simply seem to be insane. Perhaps it is necessary to be insane to some degree to survive in Wonderland for long periods of time.

I do have a theory about the odd happenings of this world. I believe that Wonderland has the ability to manifest dreams and thoughts into the physical world. Many of the things that can be found there can also be found in a child's imagination. However, it appears after a certain age, thoughts are not longer manifested. It appears only children can take advantage of this unique feature.

Perhaps it is for the best. The human mind can be a very scary place.


	15. The Calm

I'm sorry I haven't updated either of my stories! It was my last semester of college. I had a lot of work to do for my classes and senior thesis. I'd like to say that I'll be able to update more now, but since I have to look for a job now, I have no idea how often I'll be able update. That's life though.

It appears doing a chapter between words is going to be normal for me. I hope it adds to the story even if the chapters are short.

Once again, I own nothing except the plot of this story, and that's probably debatable considering it's at least partially based on the plot of the first Kingdom Hearts.

*Chapter Start!*

"We're back," announced Luxord.

"We brought Vexen a present!"

Saïx glanced at the unconscious young woman Luxord was carrying. "Do I want to know?"

The gambler shrugged. "Something unexpected happened. By the way, we'll need some extra paper for the reports. They're going to be a bit long today."

Saïx glanced at Lixcea. "Just keep her from drawing or writing anything weird."

"Of course. Just let me get this young lady down to Vexen first."

*break*

Scarlett shivered as she was grabbing her broom. "It feels like someone just walked over my grave…" She looked around nervously. She didn't see anything that would make her feel that way.

"I'm probably just missing those kids. They've been living here for the past couple of weeks…"

Scarlett sighed and went to go tend to the monsters. It was something to do. "One of those groups better come back soon. It's too quiet without them."

*break*

Luxord knocked on Vexen's lab door. "Vexen! I have something for you!"

"It's open!" Luxord pushed the door open and raised an eyebrow. Vexen was stitching up the arm of a dark-skinned and dark-haired young woman who had a blue band with a large stone holding back some of her hair. Vexen glanced in Luxord's direction. "Who is that?"

"A possible test subject for you." Luxord turned his attention to the girl getting stitched up. "What happened to you?"

The female Nobody shrugged. "I just got a bad cut from a Heartless."

"Why not just use a Cure?"

"It was a wide injury," explained Vexen. "It needed to be stitched before it was healed." Vexen happened to finish stitching at that moment. Then he used a Cure, which healed the cut completely, before removing the stitches. "There, done." The young woman got up and left without a glance at Luxord. Vexen turned his attention to the girl Luxord was carrying. "You mentioned a test subject?"

"I found her in the last world. Do you want her?"

Vexen usually had to sign several forms for a new test subject so he nodded immediately. "Of course! I never have enough subjects to test my theses on. Bring her on in. I have just the place for her."

*break*

Raxkii took a bite of ice cream. "So does anyone know what happened in the Chesapeake yet?"

Axel shrugged. "New element was introduced, bunch of foreigners. Caused a lot of conflict, which resulted in an increase in the Heartless population. I bet there are still a lot of bad feelings, so the population isn't going down any time soon."

"Does that mean we're gonna be having more missions there?"

Axel nodded. "Probably."

Raxkii groaned. "That water always gives me a headache."

Axel gave his fellow redhead an odd look. "You don't drink the water though."

"Just being near it is enough to give me a headache."

That was when Saïx appeared with an ice cream of his own and sat down on Axel's other side. "Try taking care of reports. That will give you a real headache."

Axel smirked. "What happened this time?"

"Luxord and Lixcea came back from Wonderland with a captive that Luxord took to Vexen. Thing is, no new experimental subjects were scheduled to be brought in, which I was not aware of until after the girl was delivered to Vexen."

"Who'd he grab?" asked Axel.

"Some Asian girl in a kimono and samurai armor. I didn't recognize her so I doubt she's anyone important." Saïx sighed. "After he left, Lixcea started drawing on her reports again."

"Did she draw something weird again?" asked Raxkii. While Lixcea sometimes made Raxkii uncomfortable, she could be pretty funny in small doses.

"Some people, a tea party, a mouse, a dog, a dragon, a cat, some keys…The only thing that could be important is the keys, and even that's a stretch."

"What's Vexen planning to do with the girl Luxord brought back?" asked Raxkii.

"He was asking for you so I'm assuming it's an experiment that has to do with memories."

Raxkii nodded and finished off her ice cream. "I'll see him as soon as I get back."

*line break*

"This world looks familiar," mused Riku. There were some Grecian-style buildings and people walking around in tunics of some kind. "Don't think I've been here before though."

Still, Riku started walking around, asking if anyone had seen Kairi.

One man nodded when Riku showed him the picture he was carrying around. "Saw a girl who looked a bit like that over in the coliseum a couple of days ago."

Hope started to bubble up inside of Riku. "Really?"

"Yeah, I think she was staying there or something."

"Where can I find it?"

"It's the big circular structure in the center of the city. You can't miss it."

The guy was right, Riku couldn't miss the building. He found the entrance and walked in. He didn't see anyone who resembled Kairi. Instead, he saw the back of a woman in a pointy red hat and a red coat…raking the sand. "Excuse me?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm looking for someone. I heard she was seen somewhere around here."

"Oh." The woman turned around. "Who're-You!"

Riku barely managed to dodge the Firaga to his head. He brought up his Keyblade to block a rapier that would have killed him. "Weren't you going to help? !"

"I'd never help someone like you!" Then she started stabbing him at a speed that made it nearly impossible for Riku to block them. He had to simply block the attacks that would hit something vital. Riku summoned a quick barrier and jumped back. He fired off a Dark Firaga.

The woman brought up a Shell that actually split the Dark Firaga in two. She frowned and threw her rapier at Riku with enough strength that it actually impaled into the wall. Riku froze long enough for her to get right up in his face. "Oh, you're not Sephiroth."

"Wh-what?"

"I thought you were someone else because you have similar features." She pulled back, casting a Curaga over Riku and healing his injuries. "I apologize for attacking you. Sephiroth is a very dangerous man, and you have to take any opening you can find in a fight against him."

"I-I see." Riku was still upset about getting attacked, but considering that the woman had nearly killed him just now, he decided that it would be in his best interests to just nod and go along with what she was saying. "I'm looking for my friend Kairi. I was told she was seen around here a lot."

"Kairi?" The woman thought a moment. "Can't say I know anyone by that name. Sorry."

"But that guy said he saw a girl that looked like her around here!"

"Well, she might be hanging around here a lot, but not remember her name is Kairi. A lot of people have messed up memories due to what happened when their worlds were destroyed."

"She looks like this." Riku pulled out a photograph of Kairi and held it out.

The woman squinted at the picture. "Never seen her before." Unfortunately, the woman was nearsighted and hated wearing her glasses. It made the picture very blurry to her so that she couldn't make out the finer details. Otherwise, she would have realized that Kairi not only looked disturbingly like Hana, but was wearing the same clothes. As it was… "I'm afraid I'm the only redhead who stays here regularly."

Riku stared at her in disbelief. "But that guy said he saw her here!"

"It's more likely he saw someone who looked like her. That happens sometimes. People from completely different worlds sometimes look a lot alike. Some of the more scientific minded people around here think that they're different versions of the same person. That might be the case with your Kairi."

Riku frowned. "I see. That could make things more complicated." He pocketed his picture. "Is there any way to tell these people apart?"

The woman nodded. "Well, names obviously. They always have different names, thankfully. There are also some physical differences, but they are very slight. If you know your friend well enough, you should be able to tell if someone is her or not."

"I see. How can I find someone?"

The woman shrugged. "If you find out, please share. Everyone has someone they'd like to find, but all they can do is keep looking."

Riku made a displeased sound. "Fine, thanks for your help." He turned on his heel and walked out of the coliseum.

Scarlett watched as the boy who resembled Sephiroth walked out of the coliseum. "Strange kid…"

*break*

"X…"

Luxord looked up from where he was playing solitaire to see Xemnas giving him a displeased look. "Yes? How can I help you?"

"Would you care to explain this?" Xemnas threw a sheaf of papers onto Luxord's game.

Luxord gave the messed up cards a disappointed look before glancing at the papers and recognizing them. "Oh, the reports from my mission yesterday?"

"You found four possible Keyblade users and you threw them through a wormhole to another time? !" So Xemnas could get angry…or as angry as a Nobody could get. Luxord figured it was quite the accomplishment.

"I needed to test something. I left something out of the report I filed since I thought it might be better not to put it down in a recordable form."

Xemnas raised an eyebrow, only slightly mollified. "And what was this exactly?"

"One of them looked almost exactly like Raxkii," said Luxord. "And you remember that Sora kid who was killed by Riku? Two of them looked like him."

Xemnas frowned. "That is unexpected. What of the final Keyblade wielder?"

"He was blond and his hair wasn't quite as crazy. His facial structure was similar to the other two boys' I suppose."

Xemnas became thoughtful. "That matches the description I got from Xaldin and Xelbel about the four that prevented them from retrieving that new Nobody. They never mentioned that they had Keyblades though."

Luxord nodded in agreement. "I know. Strange, isn't it?"

"That doesn't explain why you decided it was necessary to send them spiraling through time."

"I didn't send them spiraling through time. I know exactly when they are," argued Luxord.

"And that is?"

"Around 8 years ago on a world that was in the same location Wonderland was at the moment I sent them back."

Xemnas's eyebrow twitched. "And why was this necessary?"

"I wanted to see if it was really Sora."

Xemnas frowned. "And how does sending him to the past achieve this?"

"You don't know?" That was odd. Xemnas seemed to know everything. Maybe this was simply something he was unaware of? He'd never needed any knowledge on time travel before Luxord had joined The Organization, after all. "A person can't exist in two places at once. As such, traveling to a time where you already are is not possible. Sora would be…15 I believe. He'd have definitely existed 8 years ago. If one of those boys was Sora, the time jump would not have worked and they would have stayed in this time. Since they were thrown into the past, that means that neither of the boys who resembled Sora actually was Sora. In fact, since they were all thrown 8 years in the past that means none of them actually existed at that time, so they're younger than 8, which doesn't make sense considering that they look to be teenagers. That's all it told me though. I don't know who they are, but they're not Sora…or Kairi, but that second one was already pretty doubtful considering we have Raxkii."

Xemnas gave Luxord a considering look. "That is…interesting. I will have to have this matter investigated more thoroughly. However, it would still be best to bring them back. We need to complete Kingdom Hearts as soon as possible."

"Oh, don't worry, I'm planning on it as soon as another world lines up temporally with the one I left them on. Or when Xigbar shows up. Whichever comes first."

"Make sure you do. If we lose so many Keyblade wielders because of your decision, I will demote you." And that meant either being turned into a Dusk or just plain destroyed.

Luxord nodded. "Understood. I'll be sure to let you know Superior."

*break*

"Something wrong Edea?"

The sorceress looked at her husband. "I just thought I felt a ripple through time. It's been bothering me."

Cid winced. "Please tell me it wasn't that Ultimecia woman."

Edea shook her head. "No it was just time, no space. Hers included both." She gave her husband a smile. "I'm probably worrying over nothing. Ripples sometimes happen for completely natural reasons."

Cid nodded, but still had a worried look on his face. "Well, let's keep an eye on it, just in case."

*Chapter End!*

It was a short chapter, but not much is going on for most people at the moment. Except for maybe in the Chesapeake, but it's mainly politics, training, and other boring stuff. If you want to know what's happening there, I might add a chapter detailing what's going on later.

For time travel time travel to exist like it does in the movies and on TV, a person must travel through time and space at the same time. Otherwise, a person is liable to pop out in the vacuum of space and die.

Remember how I said Scarlett was wearing glasses back when Sora met Sephiroth? This is why. Her vision is bad enough that she was not able to realize that Hana and Kairi are practically the same person.


	16. Life Goes On

I finally have an update for this story! I have been having really bad writer's block with this world arc. I figured I'd kept you guys waiting long enough and decided to post this short chapter, along with a couple of extras.

I still own nothing.

**Chapter Start**

"Is that the best you can do?" taunted a gypsy with unusually spiky black hair and yellow eyes.

"You wish!" Another gypsy who also had spiky hair rushed forward and crossed swords with the first gypsy.

One might assume it was an argument or a fight to the death. That belief was quickly dispelled when one realized there was a small crowd watching them. The two gypsies traded several blows before moving onto more complicated maneuvers. However, before it could get any more interesting, they were interrupted.

"What the hell are you doing? !"

The two gypsies looked up as two guards pushed through the crowd. "Is there a problem?" asked the second gypsy.

"You lot aren't allowed to carry weapons!"

"Relax! These are blunted swords." To prove his point, the first gypsy swung his sword at his forearm hard enough to bounce off. "We couldn't hurt anyone even if we wanted to."

"You'll still rob someone with 'em!"

"Now we wouldn't!"

"That's all Gypsies do!"

The first boy suddenly pointed behind the crowd. "Dear lord! What is that? !"

Everyone promptly turned in the direction the boy pointed. There was absolutely nothing of interest to be seen. They turned back, and the two boys were gone.

The two boys quickly ran down the street and around the corner where another couple of gypsies were juggling. "We got trouble!" The two jugglers instantly stopped, grabbed the balls, and ran after the two sword fighters.

"Get back here!"

"Like we're gonna listen to that!"

"Up there!"

The one in the lead quickly scaled a building, the others right behind him. The guards stopped staring at the roofs the Gypsies were now running along.

"…How do we get up there?"

"I don't know."

The gypsies were more or less safe now at least. One of the spiky headed boys sighed. "Gypsies sure have it rough."

"Let's just find one of the sewer entrances so we get back to the court," said the other.

Shortly afterwards, they walked into an underground city. "I wish we didn't have to walk through sewage to get here," muttered the lone female.

"At least it keeps everyone else out," pointed out the gypsy with yellow eyes.

"So, how did you and Hana do?"

That's right. These four Gypsies are Sora, Hana, Kaze, and Raven. When they first ended up in this world, their coloration changed. They all ended up with brown skin. In addition, Kaze and Sora's hair had gotten darker. Kaze was now a brunette, and Sora now looked identical to Raven except for his eyes.

They'd had a few weeks to get used to that though.

"We got…five coins. Nothing special."

"We got…four." Sora huffed. "We don't make a lot of money, do we?"

"It'll be enough to get food…probably." The group sighed. They were having a tough time making a living in this world since they couldn't fight Heartless. They'd had to find other ways to earn money.

"So, what do you guys want to do now?" asked Sora.

"Wanna practice our acrobat act?" suggested Hana.

The guys shrugged. "Sure."

Believe it or not, the Court of Miracles has a trapeze set. That was where the quartet went to practice their acrobatics. They turned out to be pretty good at acrobatics. Hana figured it was because there wasn't much difference between acrobatics and aerial fighting. They were hoping to eventually be able to perform acrobatics in the street and earn some more money.

They paused as they heard some bleating come from the ground. They looked down and saw a gray goat with a gold hoop through one of its ears. "Djali?"

"So, that means…" A familiar female Gypsy was right behind the goat. "Esmeralda!" The quartet quickly made their way down the trapeze set. The older Gypsy grinned at them.

"And how have you been doing today?"

"We got chased off by some guards before we could make much money," said Hana.

Raven huffed. "Would it kill them to find someone else to bug for once?"

Esmeralda sighed. "We have always had to deal with the stigma that comes with being Gypsy. The most we can do is avoid those that would base their judgment on it." She suddenly chuckled. "By the way, I believe Clopin is looking for you."

The quartet groaned. They were not fond of the Gypsy leader. When they'd first been dumped on this world, Clopin had accused them of being spies and had them strung up for a hanging within a minute and then did a singing accusation about them. At that point, Odette had appeared, seen the situation, and reacted instinctively, setting fire to pretty much everything.

After a lot of chaos and calming Odette down. Clopin came to the conclusion that since they appeared to be witches or something, and Frollo considered such people enemies, then the quartet must be the Gypsies' friends.

It was strange logic, but at least it kept them from getting killed by a bunch of irate Gypsies and gave them a place to stay. The only catch was that their munny was no good here, and they weren't going to get any handouts. They were going to have to earn their keep. Due to a lack of skills and memories, this meant performing in the street.

That probably wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't have to deal with city guards due to their skin color. It made it difficult to get a full day of work in.

"What does that guy want now?" asked Kaze.

"He just wants to talk about the upcoming Festival of Fools."

"The what?"

"It's a day-long festival where we do all sorts of performances without having to worry about being arrested by guards," explained Esmeralda. "We also tend to be fancier since we take time to prepare for it. It's the best day to earn money in the whole year."

"It sounds fun!" said Sora. "When is it?"

"About a week or so. I'd suggest you talk to Clopin now. If you try to avoid him, not only will he find you, but he will make a scene out of it."

"How'd that guy get to be your leader anyway?" asked Raven.

"He's very clever. He's just good at hiding it." Everyone gave her a look of disbelief. "I know it's hard to believe, but it's true. If it's any consolation, he probably just wants to talk about what you'll be doing during the festival."

"Are we even doing anything during the festival?" asked Kaze. The others shrugged.

Esmeralda rolled her eyes. "Everyone does something for the festival. That's probably why Clopin wants to talk to you."

"We need to buy some food anyway…" pointed out Hana. It was true. They hadn't eaten since breakfast.

They didn't even have to look for Clopin.

"There you are!" Sora jumped and spun around. Clopin had appeared from seemingly nowhere and slung his arms around Raven and Hana. Hana's eyes had gone wide, and Raven's eyebrows and fingers were twitching in a way that said he wanted to hurt someone. Kaze was watching the interaction with a look of horror on his face. "You've been making me run around quite a bit, you know."

Sora sweatdropped. "Sorry, we didn't know you were looking for us until a little while ago. So…what did you want to talk to us about?"

"I heard this hilarious rumor that you weren't planning on doing anything for the Festival of Fools!"

"Yeah, about that-"

"So I decided to give you a routine to perform!"

That could be a problem. "It's not complicated, is it?" asked Hana.

"Define complicated." That did not bode well. "I've also noticed you haven't started working on costumes. Of course considering how well making your own clothes turned out to be…"

They all had to get new clothes to fit in with the Gypsy population and not arouse the suspicion of the rest of the French population. Thing is, none of them knew how to make clothes. The closest any of them came was Hana sewing a couple of pieces of cloth together. She couldn't figure out the patterns or how to sew them together though. They ended up resorting to the barter system, and were still in debt to the lady who'd given them the clothes.

"We'll just have to find some older costumes for you. But first, you need to learn your act!" And then he stuffed some papers down the front of Raven's shirt. "Toodleoo!" And then he somersaulted away.

"…That guy is crazy," muttered Raven, pulling the papers out of his shirt. "Are we actually gonna have to do what he says?"

"Do you want to get kicked out of here?" deadpanned Kaze.

"Good point." Raven squinted. "Hey, I can't read this guy's handwriting at all."

"Let me see," said Kaze. Raven obeyed and handed it over. "Hey, this doesn't look like any kana I've ever seen…"

Unfortunately, while they could understand people just fine, they couldn't read anything outside of Japanese. Fortunately, there were some very detailed diagrams along with the words.

"I think we're supposed to do a somersault here," said Sora.

"Who's supposed to do that?"

"I dunno…guess we need to figure that out…"

"You can't read?" The quartet jumped. At some point, Esmeralda had gotten into the habit of sneaking up on them.

"Don't do that!" shouted Kaze. Esmeralda just grinned at him. "And we can read…just not this."

"Hm?"

"We're used to characters like this." Sora showed her the back of his necklace. "It means Sora."

"Oh, so it's a different alphabet. Why didn't you say so?" Esmeralda grabbed the papers. "I can tell you what you're supposed to do."

"Don't you need to practice too though?" asked Hana.

"I've practiced enough. I can spare some time to help you figure out what you need to do."

"Thanks."

And the next week was spent practicing the festival routine and earning some money for food. Nothing too special.

The day of the festival on the other hand…

"Wow, I wonder how they managed to set up a trapeze set so quickly," mused Hana.

"They probably have a lot of practice," said Kaze, shifting uncomfortably. They'd been forced into a bunch of costumes by Clopin, and they were rather uncomfortable since he hadn't bothered to take any measurements. Hana was wearing a white outfit with long sleeves and a short skirt with the edges designed in a way to look like feathers and a white mask. Raven and Sora had identical black outfits and masks. Kaze was wearing a similar outfit in red. The clothes made them resemble birds when they were on the trapeze. "Who did this belong too? It's so small…"

Sora shrugged. "Esmeralda mentioned that smaller people make better acrobats. Not sure why…"

"I actually really like them," said Hana. "Do you think Clopin will let me keep mine?"

Raven frowned. "Maybe. No one else was using it."

The quartet looked down where the rest of the troupe was setting up stalls, rehearsing, and having fun. All in all, the festival was setting up to be quite exciting.

"I hope we can see all the other stuff," said Sora. "This looks like a lot of fun."

Hana nodded. "I wonder if we've ever been a festival before…"

Raven snorted. "'Course we have. Who hasn't been to a festival? We just…you know…forgot."

"We should make some new memories," said Kaze. "We haven't exactly had a chance to just be normal teenagers and have fun. We were just sort of dropped into a bunch of situations where we had to take care of ourselves or fight."

"We're still taking care of ourselves…mostly," pointed out Hana.

"I'm with Kaze," said Sora. "When we get a chance, let's go down there and see what this festival has to offer. Who's with me?"

"I am!"

"Me too!"

"Yeah!"

Sora grinned. "Great! Now…Should we practice or are we supposed to wait until the festival starts?"

Hana squinted. "Well, it looks like some of the others are practicing. I think it would be okay to practice now."

"Great," said Raven. "It's boring just sitting here."

"So, what do you guys want to try first?" asked Sora. He paused as something caught his eye. "Huh? What in the…"

"Something wrong?" asked Kaze.

"Do you guys see that?"

"See what?"

Sora pointed at the large church that everyone called Notre Dame. "I'm sure I saw a couple of people looking out from out of those windows."

Raven raised an eyebrow and looked up. "I don't see anything."

"Yeah, they're not there anymore…Wonder who they were…"

**Chapter End**

Yes, I know it's a short chapter, but I've been having some writer's block and life has been happening, and I felt I should give you guys something since a lot of people seem to like this story.

Yes, I made the quartet Gypsies. I got the idea from one of the Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles. Because the quartet entered Paris at a certain location (Court of Miracles), they ended up looking like the people who lived there. Funnily enough, I decided to make them Gypsies before Frollo mistook Sora for one in 3D.

About that…Did anyone else think that world was a letdown? They took out every reference to God, Hell, and Frollo's sexual obsession to Esmeralda. I get that this is a game for kids, but this was a movie for kids, and it didn't bother us (Well, not me at least.)! Trying to make it friendlier made it seem…hokey. Hope my Notre Dame arc doesn't end up like that.

Also Clopin didn't show up. I was hoping to see him in the game. As you can see, I have involved him in my story. He might be a minor character, but he's still important and fun.

I feel kind of bad giving you guys a shorter than usual chapter though. How to make up for it…The only things to come to mind are a contest or an omake that I write off the top of my head.

…Why not try both? I have no idea if I'm in a position to propose a contest, but I'll give it a try.

Okay, as you've probably realized, I'm making some original Keyblades for this story. I'm pretty much making them up as I go (although I've got an idea for what I want the Keyblade from this world to look like.). I'm sure I'm not the only one who likes doing that though. Why don't you guys try making up a Keyblade that has to do with the story? Requirements are as follows:

1: It must be original. Anyone found to copy someone else's design will be disqualified.

2: You have to draw a picture (I don't care how good or bad. I can barely draw myself.) with a description and then post it on a public domain. Then you have to let me know where it is and who you are. If I can't find your drawing/description, I'll let you know.

3: The description should contain the Keyblade's name, abilities, and who can use it (Keep it to the confirmed Keyblade wielders, please).

4: The Keyblade should be based on something that has to do with Disney, Final Fantasy, or Tezuka (since I included Black Jack in the story).

That should be all the rules. Deadline is…Let's go with December 1st. Winner gets their Keyblade featured in my story. That seems to take care of that. Now for that omake.

**Omake: The Results of Vexen's Experiment**

"Sxwon! Where is that girl?"

"Sir?"

Vexen jumped before spinning around. "Will you stop sneaking up on me like that? !"

Sxwon drew back slightly. "But I wasn't sneaking…"

"Then make more noise." Ugh, that was something Vexen never thought he'd say. He thrust a vial of something green with a purple glow at Sxwon. "Drink that."

Sxwon looked at it nervously. "Is it safe?"

"Of course, I tested it on lesser Nobodies already."

Sxwon was still nervous about swallowing the concoction, but she didn't really have a choice. She downed it in a single gulp in hopes that she could avoid the nasty taste. It didn't work, and Sxwon made a face. "What is this supposed to do?"

"Hopefully, it will result in a permanent Regen effect," explained Vexen. "The Dusks I tried it on seemed to heal just fine."

"I feel weird," moaned Sxwon, holding her groaning stomach.

Vexen whipped out a pen and clipboard. "In what way? It's obvious you're having stomach pains, but is there anything else?"

Sxwon suddenly started sneezing. It wasn't teeny little sneezes either. They were loud sneezes, one after another, at a speed that made it impossible for Sxwon to talk or even take a decent breath of air.

This lasted for exactly 12 minutes before she finally seemed to stop. By that point, she was red-faced, gasping for air, and had tears running down her face. She'd also attracted an audience of Xigbar, Zexion, Larxene, Demyx, and Lexal.

"Wow, what did you do to her?" asked Demyx.

"It's supposed to induce a permanent Regen effect," explained Vexen. "I should test that." He pulled a scalpel out of his coat and grabbed Sxwon's arm to make a small cut.

Sxwon chose this moment to sneeze again, but this time she sneezed out an orange cloud right into Vexen's face. The man went cross-eyed and fell down, completely unconscious. Larxene kicked him experimentally and got no reaction. "Well, he's not getting up."

Zexion grabbed the clipboard, apparently deciding to take over the experiment. "Feel any different?"

Sxwon blinked. Then her eyes started tearing up. "I HATE MY LIFE!" She then turned and ran down the hallway, crying loudly all the while.

"I don't think that potion or whatever's working," said Xigbar.

Zexion tossed the clipboard behind him. "Agreed. Even if this does work, the symptoms aren't worth it…Someone help me get Vexen back to his room."

Meanwhile…

Sxwon sobbed into Lixcea's shoulder, which was awkward since Lixcea was both shorter than her and sitting in a chair. At least Lixcea was being nice and patting her back in a comforting way. "Nobody likes me!"

"Isn't that a good thing?"

Lixcea's logic just made Sxwon cry even harder.

Luxord cleared his throat. "While I suspected such an occurrence to be inevitable, is it necessary for you to have your nervous breakdown in my room?"

Sxwon just kept crying.

"You know what you need?" said Lixcea. "You need more hellos."

"I don't even have any hellos!" cried Sxwon.

Luxord rolled his eyes, only to notice something. "Is that pink? Why are your tears pink?"

"I like pink," supplied Lixcea.

"Well, then take her to your room. I don't want any of my things getting died pink!"

Lixcea promptly stood up and somehow carried Sxwon out of the room.

That was how Xaldin and Xelbel found them.

"What are you doing?" asked Xaldin.

"Sxwon thinks sad thoughts. It made her cry."

Xelbel frowned when she saw some pink smears on Lixcea and Sxwon. "What's that pink stuff?" Xelbel leaned in for a closer look and realized something. "Is that-Your tears are pink! That can't be normal. You should really see Vexen about that."

"He doesn't even treat me like a human! He acts like I'm a-a-a guinea pig!"

Lixcea frowned. "That's silly No one has ever needed to throw you in a sack and sit on you."

Xelbel blanched and looked at Xaldin, hoping he could explain what that statement was supposed to mean. He looked just as bewildered as her though. "Should we try to fix this?"

Xaldin grimaced. "I refuse to be around these two for longer than necessary." Sxwon let out a particularly loud sob. "We'll take them to the Gray Room. Someone who will know how to fix this will have to appear eventually."

So after taking those two to the Gray Room, the Xelbel and Xaldin got as far away from them as necessary.

Of course, now Saïx had to deal with them. Within the first three minutes, he was twitching. In five, he was covering his ears. In 10 he was growling. In 17 he was about to go berserk.

That was when Lexaeus and Roraxua returned. Roraxua was a tall, blond woman with violet eyes and lips red as a rose.

"I'll give you 1000 munny if you get her to shut up!" shouted Saïx, pointing at Sxwon.

Roraxua perked up at that and waved at Sxwon, somehow causing the sounds Sxwon was making to just disappear. Sxwon was obviously still crying, but the sounds that should have accompanied this weren't being made.

Saïx let out a sigh of relief and handed over the promised munny.

Two hours later, Saïx left to meet up with Axel and Raxkii for movie night. Sxwon was still crying.

This is the scene Marluxia walked in on. He'd heard Lexal and Demyx complaining about how Vexen still hadn't woken up from his Sxwon-induced sleep, and was curious to see what was going on.

By this time, Sxwon had unintentionally dyed part of the couch and Lixcea pink with her tears. The silencing effect Ruroxua had put into place was still up, but Sxwon appeared to be crying even harder now.

Frowning, Marluxia walked over to the two girls. "What's going on?"

At the sound of Marluxia's voice, Sxwon jerked up and looked at Marluxia. Then she screamed, somehow negating Roraxua's silencing spell and producing a scream that could be heard all throughout The World That Never Was. Then she fainted.

"I can hear bells," said Lixcea rubbing the inside of her ears with her pinkies. "They sound like The Sitar Song Demyx likes."

"Right…" Marluxia winced at the migraine he now had. He glared at Sxwon and summoned his scythe. "You may want to avert your eyes."

"All right."

As if to add insult to injury, Vexen's concoction didn't even cause any sort of Regen effect.

**Wow, that was a weird omake…Better get working on the next chapter.**


	17. The Festival of Fools

And this time, it's a regular chapter with a short omake. I think I found a way to help me get chapters out more quickly. I hope it works.

Chapter 17 has a special guest. It'll be easy to figure out who it is.

As always, I don't own anything…probably.

**Chapter Start**

It was finally time…The festival was ready to start!

As the start of the Festival of Fools had gotten closer, more and more people had trickled in, and more and more bizarre sights could be seen, like real dogs walking humans instead of the other way around. Everyone was enjoying themselves.

Well, almost everyone. An old man in a black and purple robe with a triangular black and purple hat was scowling at pretty much everyone. "The one day of the year when the Gypsies do not hide their activities, and I am completely unable to act on it…"

"It's not so bad," mused a blond man with a beard and gold-brushed armor. It was his first festival. Some of this stuff looks like it's going to be real interesting. "They're not doing anything illegal at least." The old man made a displeased sound which made it obvious what he thought about that.

Judge Claude Frollo did not have a high opinion of Gypsies or festivals. Put the two together and you have what he despises the most.

That was about the time when the signal was given to start the festivities. The quartet immediately started their acrobatic act…Without the use of a net!

They figure if they can survive Heartless, they can survive a short fall.

They were so busy with their acrobatic act that they forgot to pay attention to the rest of the festival. They ended up missing quite a few sights, like some men on stilts doing some very impressive stunts, a food fight of epic proportions, and Esmeralda doing a very impressive dance that resulted on her ending up on Frollo's lap for a moment.

The look on his face said how much he despised her for that.

Still, while the quartet focused all their energies on performing, they found it really fun.

They were enjoying the act so much, they nearly missed what Clopin insisted was the biggest event of the festival.

Given, none of them could figure out how an ugly face contest could be the best part of the festival, but they were new and not allowed to question such things.

"They're starting the ugly face contest!" shouted Raven.

Hana landed, panting. "Great, I could use a break." She sat down, looking down at the contestants. "I thought there'd be more…"

"Me too," agreed Sora. "There's only three…"

Kaze thought a moment. "How do they judge the faces?"

His question was answered a moment later, when Esmeralda whipped one of the men's masks off, the man made a face, the crowd booed at him, and Djali head butted him off the stage. Raven pointed and laughed. The others giggled a bit too. It was the same with the second one. The third one was different.

When Esmeralda tugged on his mask, not only did it not give, but the expression changed. The dancer jerked back in surprise as the crowd fell silent.

"It's his face!" shouted Raven, pointed and laughing again. "He's not wearing a mask at all!"

Hana hit him across the head. "Don't laugh at him! It's mean!"

"But it's so perfect! He can win the ugliest face contest without even trying!"

Whether he heard Raven or just came to the same conclusion, Clopin agreed. "Now, hold on! We asked for the ugliest face in all of Paris, didn't we? What could be uglier than this? I believe we've found our King of Fools!"

Well, it seemed to get the crowd back into a cheering mood. The ugly man (who also seemed to be a hunchback.) seemed to be getting into the mood too.

"Should we start our act again?" asked Sora.

Kaze shrugged. "I'm not sure. No one really went into detail on that kind of thing."

"Let's watch a bit longer," said Hana. "That man looks so happy it's hard to look away."

Raven shrugged and dropped into a sitting position. "Sure, why not? Clopin never said how long our breaks were supposed to be anyway."

"He never said we were going to get any breaks," pointed out Kaze.

Raven waved this off. "Details, details."

And then someone threw a tomato at the ugly man. Everyone was shocked silent for a moment. Then someone threw another one. That broke the dam, and everyone started throwing produce at him.

"Wha…Why are they doing that? !" shouted Hana.

"I'm not sure," said Kaze, equally wide-eyed. "Maybe it's part of the act? That might be why so few volunteered."

"Nah, if this was normal, the crowd wouldn't have gone all quiet like that," said Raven. "No way was this planned."

Sora was being uncharacteristically quiet as he watched what was going on. When the man was lashed to a turning wheel, something broke.

He jumped off the platform, landing among the crowd. Then he pushed his way through to the wheel, pushing past those who threw produce more roughly than was actually necessary.

Sora got to the wheel and climbed up. Everyone stopped throwing and shouting as soon as he turned to face them. This was probably because he was giving them a combination of a 'I am disappointed in you beyond all belief' look and a 'I will kill you slowly and painfully if you don't stop NOW' look. It was a very effective combination.

"Wow, you're good," said Raven. "Can't be many people who can get an entire crowd to shut up without saying anything." Behind the two, Kaze and Hana started trying to untie the hunchback.

They could've just summoned their Keyblades, but they wanted to avoid being accused of witches and burned at the stake.

Sora would have continued giving the crowd an epic disapproving stare, but he noticed Esmeralda climbing onto the platform as well. She'd changed into her normal clothes, which might explain where she'd been during the fruit flinging. She untied her sash and started using it to wipe the hunchback off.

"You!" Sora calmly turned around. It was the important man, Judge Frollo. Sora frowned. He'd expect a judge to want the chaos to stop. Then again, Sora was pretty sure he'd seen one of the city guards tying the hunchback to the wheel. "Gypsies! Get down at once!"

Sora glanced behind him where Esmeralda, Kaze, and Hana were whispering soothing things to the hunchback. He turned back to the man. "No."

"What?"

"We're not getting down 'till this guy is untied and free to go."

"I forbid it!"

That seemed to make something snap in Esmeralda. She glared at Frollo, pulled a dagger from somewhere (Gypsies were good at hiding stuff.), and cut through the binding ropes with a jerk of his wrist and a gasp from the crowd. Raven snorted. "I don't think she heard you."

Frollo bristled. "How dare you defy me!"

"You mistreat this boy the same way you mistreat our people!" accused Esmeralda.

"And you don't have a good reason for either of those," added Sora. Yeah, Gypsies occasionally stole because it meant death otherwise, but he'd seen white people steal too…and they hadn't appeared to be starving.

"You speak of justice yet you are cruel to those most in need of your help!" continued Esmeralda

"Silence!"

"Justice!" Esmeralda then turned and helped the others with getting the hunchback to his feet. Sora gave Frollo one last look for good measure before turning to help. Frollo gave them all a dour look.

"Mark my words Gypsies. You will pay for this insolence."

Esmeralda, ever the show woman, smiled, turned, and bowed. "Then it appears we crowned the wrong fool." She stood up, grasping the jester hat the hunchback had been wearing. "The only fool I see here is you!" She threw the hat at Frollo, somehow making it land perfectly upright in front of the judge. The crowd gasped yet again.

The crowd doesn't seem to do much besides throw stuff and gasp.

Frollo's expression became enraged. "Captain Phoebus, arrest them."

The captain didn't say anything. He just gave the Gypsies an odd look and snapped his fingers. Several guards on horseback made their way through the crowd to the platform.

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…of them and five of us," counted Raven. "That's not so bad."

"We don't have weapons," pointed out Kaze.

"What's a poor girl to do?" asked Esmeralda pulling a handkerchief out of her shirt and sobbing into it for a moment before blowing her nose.

The handkerchief let out an explosion of purple smoke as soon as Esmeralda blew her nose, allowing the Gypsies to make a quick escape. They didn't get far of course, but at least it confused the guards.

Frollo jerked back. "Witchcraft!"

Contrary to Frollo's belief, there was no magic involved with this trick. You just had to be flexible, fast, and have a plan to disappear when the smoke went off.

They were actually just under the platform. Of course, they would be found pretty quickly if they didn't move, so the five Gypsies darted out in five different directions.

"Oh boys! Over here!" shouted Esmeralda from a platform.

"No over here!" shouted Raven from the other side of the square.

Sora whistled. "Don't forget me!"

"Or me!"

"Who're you going after first?"

The guards were understandably confused over who to go after first. Eventually they split up.

"Hey don't ignore me!" shouted Raven. That alerted the guards to the fact that no one was going after Raven, giving him the chance to run away. So several turned towards him.

"Now you're ignoring me!" complained Kaze. Several guards turned towards him.

"You're forgetting me!" shouted Hana in a sing-song voice.

Eventually, the guards sorted out who was going after who, and the chase could really start.

A couple of guards climbed up onto the platform Esmeralda was on. She promptly dived off the platform, but was caught by the crowd and moved out of the way. The two guards tried to do the same thing, but the crowd moved out of the way so that they slammed into the ground instead.

Meanwhile, another couple of guards went over towards Kaze, who happened to be next to a hanging cylindrical cage with an old man inside. "Excuse me." Then he jumped, grabbing the cage and swinging it into the guards, knocking them over.

Unfortunately, the chain holding the cage was rather shoddily made, and this caused it to snap, sending the cage and Kaze flying. Fortunately, the cage landed on its side with Kaze on his feet on top of it. However, it was rolling very quickly, forcing Kaze to run along with the rolling, to avoid a nasty fall.

Sora had meanwhile grabbed a wheeled board (commonly used by Gypsies pretending to be crippled) and was using it like a skateboard. He wheeled over to right in front of Kaze and gestured for Kaze to jump on. This seemed like a better choice than an improvised log roll, so Kaze did, although the cage was still rolling along behind them. Kaze's eyes widened. "Look out!"

Sora snapped to attention and saw one of the stilt walkers right in front of them. He promptly swerved to the side. The guards that were chasing them weren't so lucky. They didn't try to stop, and the stilt walker wound back and kicked them all in the groin at once.

Then Sora and Kaze accidentally went up a wagon, and crashed upon landing, although they quickly got back up and kept on running.

Meanwhile, Raven ran by with another couple of guards running by him. He grinned when he saw yet another stilt walker. He jumped up, grabbed the man's pants, and promptly pantsed him. The guards weren't able to stop in time, and ran right into the pants. The pants, oddly enough, acted like a slingshot, sending them flying when the clothing snapped back.

Hana hadn't been doing anything as theatrical as her friends. She'd been ducking in and out among the crowd, like a whack-a-mole. The lone guard trying to catch her couldn't get to her because he was considerably larger than her and not able to navigate among the crowd as well as her.

Then a guard helmet landed on Hana's head. Hana reacted by grabbing it and hurling it at the guard chasing after her. It hit him in the face, knocking him down, and went flying off.

By an amazing coincidence, it went flying towards Esmeralda, who caught it, made a rather dramatic bow, and threw it at Phoebus. He ducked, and the helmet embedded itself in the wood behind him, severing the cloth hanging over it.

"What a woman!"

And some soldiers on horses were now riding towards Esmeralda, identifying her as the ringleader apparently. She took off running for another stilted man who was holding a large staff. The man grinned and dropped the staff just as the guards rode by. The guards stared at the staff in shock for a moment before realizing they were heading straight for Frollo's booth.

They didn't have time to stop, Frollo didn't have time to move, and the staff went right through the booth, causing it to collapse on Frollo. Frollo fought his way out of the wreckage glaring at the soldiers who'd cause the collapse before looking among the crowd.

The give troublemaking Gypsies were nowhere to be seen.

The five ran around the streets of Paris for a short while. However, the quartet became so worried about each other that they went to the meeting point for any Gypsy in big trouble: Notre Dame.

They made their way there shortly after the crowd from the festival dispersed, arriving within minutes of one another.

"Fighting without Keyblades is hard," complained Raven.

Kaze nodded. "No kidding."

"I haven't had that much trouble since we first woke up."

Hana gasped a bit. "Do you think we're out of practice?"

"We practice in the court though…" muttered Raven.

"I guess we should learn how to fight without Keyblades," said Sora.

"But we can't lose them!" protested Raven.

"We might be in a position where we can't use them again," pointed out Hana. "I think learning a little bit would help us in the long run."

They were interrupted when the door open and they saw Esmeralda and Djali walk in. She grinned at them. "Looks like great minds think alike, huh?"

"Well, they can't arrest us if we claim sanctuary," commented Kaze. "It's the safest place for us."

Raven snickered. "I like what you did with the crowd. I can't believe those two guys tried to follow you!"

Esmeralda chuckled. "Well, that bit with the cage was amusing too."

"That guy ended up in the stocks as soon as he got out though," said Hana. "I feel kind of bad for him."

"Why was he in that cage anyway?" asked Sora.

"Who knows?"

"I'm kind of surprised the booth Frollo was sitting in was broken so easily," said Kaze. "What was that staff made of?"

Esmeralda waved his question off. "It's just that it was a temporary booth. It's supposed to collapse easily."

Their conversation was cut short as the church doors slammed open, revealing Frollo, Phoebus, and several other guards.

"We claim sanctuary!" shouted Sora.

"Ha!" shouted Raven. "You got nothing!"

Frollo took a deep breath, as if he was trying to calm himself down. "Captain."

"You heard him. They claimed sanctuary. I can't do anything."

"Only one claimed sanctuary."

"Sanctuary!" chimed in the other three members of the quartet. Esmeralda said nothing. Frollo gestured towards her. Phoebus sighed and walked over, grabbing her wrist. "Claim sanctuary," he hissed.

"What?"

"Say it."

Esmeralda narrowed her eyes. "Is this a trick?"

"I'm waiting, Captain," said Frollo."

Phoebus suddenly backed off and turned to face Frollo. "I'm sorry sir. She claimed sanctuary. There's nothing I can do."

"Then drag her outside at-"

"Frollo!" Everyone turned to see a man in red and white robes walking over and giving Frollo a disapproving look. "You will not touch her!" Surprisingly enough, Frollo seemed to back down a bit. The white-robed man turned to Esmeralda. "Don't worry. Minister Frollo learned years ago to respect the sanctity of the church."

Frollo sneered a bit but jerked his head, indicating that they were to leave. The group let out a collective sigh of relief.

"Is it okay for us to have animals in here?" asked Kaze. Djali was sticking next to Esmeralda for the most part, but she was a goat and was liable to do goat things.

"Of course, all of God's creatures are welcome here, and may stay as long as they wish."

Hana smiled. "Thank you. That's very kind."

"But we're stuck here," muttered Raven. "I don't know how long I can stand to be cooped up in here."

"Then perhaps you would like to visit Quasimodo," suggested the Archdeacon.

"Who?"

"He is the bell ringer," explained the Archdeacon. "Due to his…appearance, he has spent most of his life in the bell tower. Today was the first time he'd left it. I'm afraid it went very badly."

"He was the hunchback at the festival," realized Esmeralda.

The Archdeacon nodded solemnly. "I admit that I worried his appearance would elicit some…unpleasant responses, but I didn't think it would be this bad." He sighed. "I can't say I'm happy with him being isolated from the rest of the world though."

"Then we'll go see him," said Sora. "Maybe we can be friends."

The Archdeacon blinked in surprise. "You really want to see him then?"

Sora shrugged. "Sure, it's not like you can ever have too many friends."

The Archdeacon smiled and chuckled. "Yes, I suppose that's true." He pointed at a set of stairs set in one of the walls. "Those stairs will take you to the bell tower. He returned there shortly after the festival nodded."

"Thank you."

So the group started walking towards the set of stairs near the entrance.

Then Frollo jumped out from behind a pillar and grabbed Esmeralda, twisting an arm behind her back. The quartet instantly got into fighting positions, preparing for the worst. "You think you've outwitted me, but I am a patient man, and Gypsies don't do well inside stone walls."

Then Frollo paused before suddenly sniffing at Esmeralda's hair. She instantly got a disgusted look on her face. "What are you doing?"

"I was just imagining a rope around that beautiful neck."

"But you were smelling her," said Sora. "What does smelling have to do with hanging?"

Getting called out in such a naïve way caught Frollo off guard enough for Esmeralda to break free and give him a scathing look. "I know what you were thinking."

"Such a clever witch. So typical of your kind, to twist the truth to cloud the mind with unholy thoughts."

"Well your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!" declared Raven. Everyone stared at him in a combination of shock and confusion.

Frollo gave Raven a look of apoplectic rage. "You've chosen a magnificent prison, but it is a prison nonetheless. Set one foot outside, and you're mine." Then Frollo stormed towards the double doors with an almost visible aura of fury emanating from him. The door was slammed shut behind him.

Esmeralda groaned. "Why did you have to say that? Now he's going to be even more obsessed on arresting us."

"You know…I don't really know," admitted Raven, looking slightly confused himself. "It just sort of came out. I don't even know what it means."

"It means that his father partook heavily in alcohol and bestiality."

Raven made a face. "Oh, no wonder he got so angry at me."

"Uh, what's bestiality?" asked Kaze. The rest of the quartet shrugged.

"Well, let's go to the bell tower," said Esmeralda, eager to avoid having to explain that to four teenagers. There was a lot of things she was willing to do, but that wasn't one of them. She quickly herded the kids to the stairway and up to top of the tower.

At first, they were blown away by all the bells up there. It was hard to believe so many bells could be crammed in the space. Then they climbed the ladder in front of them to the next platform.

Quasimodo was on this platform and was staring at them in horror, not surprising considering what had just happened. Still, they'd helped him so it was kind of odd that he'd be scared of him.

Sora waved. "Hi! We came to visit!"

Esmeralda looked around in amazement. "This is amazing."

"Are you all right?" asked Hana. Quasimodo was backing away quite a bit.

Kaze held up his hands in an attempt to calm him down. "Relax. We're not here to hurt you, see?"

That still didn't seem to work, so Esmeralda stepped forward. "I'm really sorry about this afternoon. I had no idea who you were. I would never in my life have pulled you up on the stage if I had known what was going to happen."

Quasimodo still looked really nervous. "Hey, we helped you, remember?" pointed out Raven. "Doesn't that count for anything?"

"Uh, well, I-I-"

"Honestly, Quasi…" Everyone jumped at the unexpected voice and started looking around for the source. "Didn't you want to go out and meet people? Well, here they are!"

"Who's there?" asked Raven. "Show yourself!"

"Very well."

They heard a tap behind them and turned. Standing there was a very strange man. He had auburn hair that covered one of his eyes, a red coat which had some missing parts replaced by a black web-like material, red gloves, a black shirt and pants (Actually, it looked like something a gypsy would wear to a certain extent.), and what appeared to be a sword hilt sticking out of his coat. "Here I am."

**Chapter End**

And that was the disastrous Festival of Fools.

I don't know where Sora learned his Epic Stare of Disapproval. It just happened. Maybe he picked it up from Scarlett?

**Omake: The Source of Raven's Insults?**

"I got the movie!" Axel slipped the DVD into the machine and flopped back onto the couch next to Raxkii.

"Which movie did you choose?" asked Saïx.

"Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

Both Raxkii and Saïx groaned. That was like…the 20th time Axel had chosen that movie since Raxkii had started joining them for movie night. "Can't you choose something else?" asked Raxkii. "I'd rather watch anything else!"

"Oh come on! It's a funny movie!"

"That's because it's stupid and you find stupidity amusing," countered Saïx. "Not to mention some of the content is questionable."

Axel immediately waved off Saïx's concerns. "Eh, those nuns don't actually do anything. Now shush, the movie's starting."

Axel was right. The weirdest opening credits Raxkii had ever seen were rolling across the scene. She wrinkled her nose. "You have such weird taste…"

Saïx just rolled his eyes. "You're lucky you're cute."

And it was _that_ comment that caused Raxkii to choke on her popcorn.


End file.
